Cynical Cinema

All Hat is a movie that seems to be strangely unsure of itself. When I picked it up, I was fairly excited. Everyone on the cover was wearing cowboy hats and carrying guns. Shotguns and pistols and so forth. However, the movie is not a western. Not really, anyway. And it doesn’t involve that many guns. In fact, there are guns in only one scene, and they are both pistols, and the shotgun on the cover of the DVD box never makes an appearance. The whole movie, I was looking for that shotgun. When is it going to show up? Does someone get their head blown off? Or will they just be scared away by the cocking sound the shotgun makes? It never materialized. I was so desperate to see a shotgun by the time it was over that I watched all the special features. Was it left on the cutting-room floor? Did the editors deprive me of the chance to see someone blasted in the chest? It turns out no. The shotgun existed only to be photographed for the DVD cover, and nothing else.

Also, throughout the film, I was wondering where the title came from. All Hat? What does that mean? Why would you name a movie All Hat? How is that going to get people to watch, for starters, and what focus group came up with that gem? Well, it turns out that this Canadian movie was based on a book by Canadian author Brad Smith (a celebrated fiction writer, he also wrote One-Eyed Jacks, which is not to be confused with the very under-rated western directed by and starring Marlon Brando). And his book was named All Hat. And it comes from a bizarre line in the book and the film: “you’re all hat and no cattle, son”. What does that mean? Why do they think that’s a bad-ass line? Why did Keith Carradine deliver it like he was John Wayne? Why am I still watching this? Oh right, the shotgun.

There are other reasons to watch All Hat, besides the non-existent shotgun. First of all, Lisa Ray is very hot. (Her most famous role was in Deepa Mehta’s terrific Canadian-Indian film, Water.) And secondly, it is pretty short. So you won’t waste a large portion of your day. The movie begins with Ray (Luke Kirby) being released from prison and picked up by Pete (Carradine). Then there is some horse racing. We don’t know what Ray’s done to be put into prison, and it becomes pretty clear that we’re going to be told, slowly, in pieces, over the course of the film. Like it’s some kind of big revelation. But when we find out what that revelation actually is, it is…very disappointing. Also disappointing are the characters. Rachel Leigh Cook plays a jockey who is sassy and bitter and kind of a jerk. But we’re supposed to LIKE her for that! She’s a free-spirit! The bad guy, Sonny, is an absolute cartoon. He may as well spend much of the movie stroking a cat and enter each scene to the strains of Thus Spake Zarathustra.

And the big sting at the end, to nab the bad guy? Painfully unsatisfying, unless you’re really into those simplistic after-school-special movie endings. Imagine for a moment that the big gag at the end of The Sting was that Doyle Lonnegan gets a pie in the face. That’s about the level of clever we’re dealing with here. But I think it has more to do with shoddy direction than with an actual lack of cleverness to the premise. Lots of other strange stuff happens in All Hat. Every single character, almost at all times, is drinking. Beer, whiskey, from a flask, from the bar. Always. Like the Trailer Park Boys, only…serious. They all (men, and women, at convenient times) hang out at the local strip club. Small-town strip club, eh? Why would that be in the movie? Especially since there is NO nudity. Why have everyone hang out at a strip club all the time, unnecessarily, unless it’s a cheap excuse for cheap nudity? Maybe in this case it’s a cheap excuse for that expensive hooker bit.

Graham Greene shows up, just to let us know for sure that this movie is Canadian. And then - out of nowhere - there is a gross-out comedy scene, clumsily handled, as though it were out of Epic Movie or the crappier version of the Farrely Brothers. A guy gets sprayed, head to toe - with horse semen! What? Where did that come from? What movie IS this? What’s going on? Well, the answer is, not much of anything. A guy gets out of jail, his enemy is evil, Lisa Ray is gorgeous, there are horses that race, a sting is set up for the bad guy, the payoff is weak, you’re all hat and no cattle, the end. All Hat comes out May 27th, tomorrow, from Alliance Films. It’s worth skipping. You see, it’s all hat and no cattle. I think.

Our Very Own is a movie that stars some young up-and-coming stars, and it’s set in a small town in the 70s. It’s not much of a town, and unfortunately it’s not much of a movie. This is the kind of small town where everyone knows everyone, and the only thing for teenagers to do on a Saturday night is get in a car and drive around, gossiping. These kids go to Nashville for a really big night out, and you think they are going to take in a show, or hit a bar, but their idea of excitement is sneaking into a hotel and riding the elevators. There are cartoon bullies who harass the good kids, there is a greasy spoon diner where everyone hangs out, and every family has their issues. In short, it’s the same small town that has been used in every movie since Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands and The Outsiders. It is the ultimate Small Town U.S.A.

Which is irritating, on the surface, because we’ve seen it so many times before. We have seen hundreds of films set in this very same small town with these very same characters. But in the end, it is a decent fit, because the main thrust of the movie requires the town to be this small and this boring and this predictable. You see, that small town is Shelbyville, Tennessee, the home town of Hollywood 70s superstar Sondra Locke. Several people watched this movie with me. None of them had ever heard of Sondra Locke. So for those of you unfamiliar with her work, think of every Clint Eastwood movie made between 1971 and 1985. She was the love interest. The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Every Which Way But Loose, Bronco Billy, Sudden Impact…in fact, without Clint Eastwood, NO ONE would have heard of Sondra Locke. They were together for a fairly long time, but never married. Yet somehow this movie mentions her four hundred times without a mention of Clint. Seems strange.

But she is an ideal star for a movie such as this one. Just like John Malkovich was an inspired choice for Being John Malkovich, Sondra Locke is the perfect 70s star for Our Very Own. This town is so small and insignificant, you see, that the possibility that Sondra Locke might return for an afternoon at a horse show is enough to send the town into a frenzy of gossip and preparations. Or, at least, the teenagers. The dream here, of course, is that they will be spotted by their famous ex-pat, discovered, and whisked off to Hollywood to become stars themselves. And once again the movie retreats back into that familiar formula. The dreary hopelessness and tedium of small town life, the dreams to get out…it’s all too familiar and it’s all too boring. Some fine actors give fine performances but that’s all this movie can manage. It’s fine. It’ll do. And that’s all.