Review of Powder Blue (2009) by Aaron B — 17 Sep 2010

Powder Blue is one of those films that takes a group of separate people, tell their story, and then tie it all together in the end. It all started with Magnolia and in the last decade plus everyone wants to do it. The thing about Powder Blue is that it tries to be one of those films, but the structure is haphazard at best. The core character in the film is Rose Johnny (Jessica Biel), your typical stripper with a drug problem who also happens to have a dying son in the hospital. Next we have Jack (Ray Liotta), a guy that just go out of the clink, picks up a briefcase full of bills, and goes out to right the wrongs that have happened in his life. Attach to that Qwerty (Eddie Redmayne) the son of a dead mortician who is drowning in bills. Finally we get to Charlie (Forrest Whittaker) who is driving around seedy areas of town carrying fifty grand for the one person that will shoot him in the heart.

It's a fine cast. That's not really the problem. It's just that we've seen it all before. The stripper trying to save her kid. The father that regrets a life of not being there. The main core of the film is standard film fodder, leaving the morticians story, which isn't much of a story at all other than finally serving its purpose in the third act of the film. This brings us to Charlie's saga that is pasted to the rest of the film near the beginning and then refusing to intersect again. It's an interesting story, but what it has to do with the rest of the film is a mystery to me. It would have made a fine separate film instead of being an added attraction to the club standard that the rest of the film appears to be.

This is a basic, paint by numbers film that doesn't really do anything above and beyond the norm. There is a very creepy Patrick Swayze in this that blows the mind in his filth and vulgarity that could interest some. Otherwise this is a film that tries to be more than what it is and fails at it.