THE INFORMERS (2009): A MOVIE SNAPSHOT

William & Laura have tete-a-tete.

This is a slice-of-life look at Babylon West in the year 1983. It is a rather detestable, tedious film. It is part of an emerged body of  movies belonging now to their own genre, the Gay genre. This is not to say that there weren’t pleny of pretty women lolling about. That’s a pretty exact description, too. These people are frequently seen in bed, sofas or chaise lounges, often enough in threesomes or even foursomes. Besides this they take a lot of drugs and drink a lot of booze. Some, throughout the film, appear to be “stoned.”

There is some satire woven into the flick. Also, I predicted the inevitability of male frontal nudity in Hollywood films, when I reviewed Boogie Nights on community television. Now, they are getting “artsy” angles to boot. Pornography is dead; only “doubting the Holocaust” is considered pornography nowadays – and even that may die.

Graham & Chrissie attempt a vertical moment.

As with the Eagles’ song. Hotel California, this “could be heaven or this could be hell.” One of the apparent problems was stated by Graham (Jon Foster) , “if people don’t teach you, how are going to know what is right or what is wrong?” He should know a lot about the latter but doesn’t. The closest he gets is an uneasy feeling that: What it is may not be right.

Graham has a very attractive girlfriend, Chrissie (Amber Heard), who is very laid-back (literally). She’s kool to threesomes, which is good, because one or both are frequently in bed with a third man, who may be a male prostitute. He and Graham apparently deal drugs also.

So it goes with all the cast. William (Billy Bob Thornton) plays a practiced dissembler, adulterer, fornicator and absentee father. Cheryl Lane (Winona Ryder), who is a TV reporter,  is one of his love interests. She looks a bit like Betty Boop on “chrank.”               

Peter contemplating "easy-street" as he sells new "product."

Peter (Mickey Rourke) is a career criminal presently making some money by kidnapping boys (possibly girls too) and selling them to a gang that is going to exploit them, apparently. Take your choice, but this film is so solidly set in the movie-TV-music scene that – on a bet – that is the area of exploitation which will befall them. Laura (Kim Basinger) is “uninspired,” spending her money on pills, alcohol and a male prostitute, when not “bummed out” and brooding. All the young crowd seemed to gravitate to “sex and drugs and rock &  roll,” led by Graham & Chrissie.

This film is directed by Gregor Jordan. Its screenplay writers include Bret Easton Ellis & Nicholas Jarecki. They have condensed the cultural imperatives of the late 70s and early 80s into a brief period of casual, tolerant, stoned, sexually-swinging human interactions. Put differently, this is a Los Angeles Malpaso.

The film opens with shots of the Los Angeles freeways at or near dusk. Their headlights were soon adding color to the roads. It doesn’t take long for a lass to flip through some current television, and at one channel encounter a story of a strange new illness that seems to affect homosexual males, primarily. She watches a few moments, doesn’t find it appealing, and changes station.

 Folks, this is your flash clue to where this film’s heart resides. At the end of this film the moviegoer finds Chrissy on a stretch of Malibu beach. She’s very sick, her body is dotted with the “Kaposi’s sarcoma” type of cancer. Her boyfriend has been called by someone, goes there, doesn’t really know what to do or say, exhanges a few brief words with her, kisses her, and rises as if to leave. Fade to black.

The film is filled with “pretty, pretty boys that she calls ‘friends.’” Near the beginning one is run over in the parking area of a location hosting a party. It may have been a “hit” hit. In the end the moviegoer is left with the image of a beautiful, shapely woman in a bikini on a Malibu Beach beach, dying of a disease that is almost exclusively the province of homosexuals. It seemed such a waste, until one recalled the previous 90 minutes of film. Perhaps Mother Nature was merely collecting her “vigorish” from another loser in life’s foolish gambles.

I believe this film is meant to gain some sympathy for the plagues that seem to afflict those who’ve entered into that other “kind of love.” However, the film milieu is one that soon induced contempt. There are capable actors in this film, but  none are capable of making their various characters appealing. Some may see this movie as a plea for tolerance. Since no one in the film is moral, why demand an impossible standard?

Aleister Crowley is said to have said from the heights of Satanism: “The whole of the law is this: Do what thou wilt.” Or, as the dudes of the 60’s & 70’s put it: Do your thang!

In this case the best thang to do is skip this film.

All rights reserved. Gobigfoot, 2009.