Review of Passion Play (2011) by Russell M — 24 Oct 2010

Passion Play is one of those Why What How movies - Why did the screenplay get made, What where the actors thinking, and How the hell did the film get financed. Watching it during it's world-wide premiere was an embarrassing experience; it became impossible not to laugh during Play's most serious and sincere moments, and it's perhaps telling that the cast did not join the director onstage after the film for the Q&A (even though some of them were still sitting in the audience). Passion Play was indeed a passion project for the director, who first wrote the screenplay 2 decades ago. With that much time on his hands, for God sakes, he should have cared less about pulling together an amazing cast (Mickey Rourke, Megan Fox, and Bill Fucking Murray) and more about not only telling a coherent and compelling story, but making sure he had enough money that it would actually look semi-decent on screen.

The acting talent is wasted, primarily because they're asked to create characters that can't possibly exist in the real world. Rourke does is standard broken-up tough guy routine, and he does it well, but when you're his age (and appearance), it's tough to buy a love story with Megan Fox. She is, by the way, impressive in this film, and it's the first movie where I could honestly say she acted well. Bill Murray is a gangster - 'nuff said, about that. He belongs in another movie, a funnier movie, but you still love him just because he's a God. The movie is about a man sent out to the desert to be killed, and then is rescued by random Mexicans for some reason (this happens throughout the film - every time he's about to die, some lame deux es machina inexplicably saves him). He wanders through the desert, finds a carnival, and then discovers a young woman (Fox) who has grown a set of wings. They fall in love, go on the lam, and he eventually tries to sell her to the mobster trying to kill him (Murray).

What could have been magical and whimsical ends up being repetitive, unbelievable, and completely undone by the worst special effects I have ever seen. Seriously. That isn't hyperbole. Now, I'm really hoping what we saw wasn't a finished cut (half the music was temp tracks from other movies for Christ sakes), but if the CGI is finished, then the result is unforgivable, and assures this movie will go straight to DVD. You know the Old Spice commercial where the guy hops from the waterfall into the tub? Imagine those special effects, only twice as bad. Her wings are completely fake, and never look remotely, even for one second, real. I mean, how hard is it to just make prosthetic wings? And every time she pulls them out, the director decided to shoot everything in front of a really poor green screen. The finale of the film, set atop a building where Fox and Rourke fly to safety, was so shoddy and pathetic that the entire audience burst out laughing. In short, Passion Play is a mild curiosity at best, a missed opportunity especially, and at it's worst, an embarrassment for all involved.