Cast: Cole Hauser, Robin Tunney, Tom Sizemore, Dennis Farina, Daniel Baldwin, Tom Hollander, Kevin Gage, Blake Bryan
Director: Paul Abascal
Producers: Bruce Davey, Mel Gibson, Stephen McEveety
Screenplay: Forrest Smith
Cinematography: Daryn Okada
Music: Brian Tyler
U.S. Distributor: 20th Century Fox
The revenge film is an enduring Hollywood tradition that will probably never vanish as long as at least one of the major studios is still in business. Done right, this kind of film can have an undeniable visceral impact. When the protagonist's cause is justified and the bad guys are so bitterly evil that an audience can't help hating them, this type of motion picture can work. Charles Bronson's career received a revival as a result of Death Wish, one of the most popular vengeance-based flicks of all time. By their nature, revenge films are adult - they feature a degree of brutality that is unsuitable for kids. For anyone who may have wondered what a teen-oriented movie of this ilk might look like, the opportunity has arrived with the release of Paparazzi.
It would be unfair to blame the movie's failure on the rating in its entirety. For, although the PG-13 forces a neutering of the violence needed to drive an audience into a frenzy of bloodlust, Paparazzi has plenty of other problems as well. Most of these have to do with the screenplay (credited to Forrest Smith), which is a pastiche of clichés and bad dialogue. ("I'm going to destroy your life and eat your soul," quoth the villain.) Still, one has the sense that if the level of violence had been ratcheted up a little, Paparazzi might have been more of a guilty pleasure and less of a chore to watch.
The theme behind the movie almost certainly has more appeal to those making it than to those sitting in the audience. After all, who among us worries about photographers following us around, taking our pictures at inappropriate moments? For celebrities, it's a big issue, so to someone like producer Mel Gibson, the concept of an actor turning on the paparazzi must have been an enticing one. This allure explains why people like Gibson, Chris Rock, and Matthew McConaughey would make cameo appearances in a B-movie like this one.
Some of the incidents in Paparazzi are loosely based on actual events, which places the movie squarely into the arena of exploiting them. The car chase that ends tragically recalls what happened with Princess Diana, and several other run-ins remind us of publicized encounters between paparazzi and the likes of Sean Penn and Alec Baldwin (whose brother, Daniel, plays a photographer). Yet the movie should not be seen as a cautionary tale. This movie doesn't aim anywhere near that high. And, aside from a few throw-away lines, Paparazzi doesn't acknowledge that it's the public's insatiable thirst for celebrity dirt that keeps the men and women behind the cameras employed. (Not that anyone could reasonably expect such a least-common-denominator film to make even a cursory social statement.)
Action star Bo Laramie (Cole Hauser) has just hit the big time, and he almost immediately discovers that there are as many drawbacks as there are perks to being a celebrity. For example, he can't go to his son's soccer game without being hounded by photographers. He lays down a simple rule - they can take as many pictures of him as they want as long as they leave his family alone. A group of paparazzi, led by sleazebag Rex Harper (Tom Sizemore), openly defy him. After Bo punches Rex, he ends up participating in a court-ordered anger management program. His next encounter with Rex is more violent, as a group of photographers force Bo into a car accident that leaves his wife, Abby (Robin Tunney), injured and his son, Zach (Blake Bryan), in a coma. That's when Bo decides that if the law (represented by Dennis Farina's sympathetic detective) can't handle the paparazzi, he'll do it himself - the old-fashioned way.
The two leads are well-cast. I can buy into Cole Hauser as an up-and-coming action hero, and I doubt anyone will have trouble accepting Tom Sizemore as a bottom-feeder. (Perhaps only Mickey Roarke could do the part better.) Sizemore's off-screen image helps. Here's a guy who has been in almost as much legal trouble as Robert Blake. In the wake of his scandalous and violent break-up with Heidi Fleiss, he probably has had his share of run-ins with tabloid journalists and photographers. If there's a disappointment in the casting, it's Dennis Farina. Despite playing the role into which he has been typecast, he isn't believable as this cop. Hopefully, he'll be more convincing replacing Jerry Orbach in TV's "Law and Order."
The filmmaker, hand-picked by Gibson, is makeup artist-turned-TV director Paul Abascal, making his feature debut. To his credit, Abascal generates some tension between Bo and Rex, and we are rooting for Bo to ritually disembowel his rival, which makes the dud of an ending all the more disappointing. I suspect that an R-rated Paparazzi would have concluded with a much more satisfying bang and a lot of gore. But what we end up with is muted and disappointing, two qualities that are true of the production as a whole. If you belong to the select group whose public and private moments are plagued by a swarm of photographers, you may welcome what this movie has to offer. The rest of us, who lack the problems associated with fame and wealth, will not be as appreciative.
© 2004 James Berardinelli