LONELY HEARTS
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Roadside Attractions/ Samuel Goldwyn Films
Grade: B+
Directed by: Todd Robinson
Written By: Todd Robinson
Cast: John Travolta, James Gandolfini, Salma Hayek, Jared
Leto, Laura Dern, Scott Caan, Alice Krige
Screened at: Broadway, NYC, 3/8/07
Opens: April 13, 2007
Some criminals condemned to death die with dignity, even with
wit, others do not. George Appel, electrocuted in 1928,
quipped, "Well, folks, you'll soon see a baked Appel." Jesse
Walter Bishop, gassed in 1979 in Nevada, uttered these final
words: "I've always wanted to try everything once." And James
Donald French, electrocuted in 1966, suggested a headline to a
newsman: "French Fries." Sitting in the electric chair, Frederick
Charles Wood in 1963 proclaimed, "Gentlemen, you are about
to see the effects of electricity upon wood." On the other hand,
in the movie ‘Point of No Return," Bridget Fonda's character,
Maggie Hayward cried like a baby for her mommy and wet the
floor when strapped to the electric chair.
In 1996 Arturo Ripstein did a Mexican version of the story,
"Profundo Carmesi," about a man who conned lonely women
out of their money, whose gig changed when he found a woman
to act as an accomplice. The real hit with Americans came
earlier, though, in a movie starring Shirley Stoler.
Shirley Stoler's character, Martha Beck, did not die with dignity
when strapped to the electric chair in the 1970 movie "The
Honeymoon Killers," an earlier version of Todd Robinson's
current offering, "Lonely Hearts." Stoler, who was Leonard
Kastle's authentic Martha Beck, was so overweight that she
could not fit into the chair. Her execution was delayed. In
director Robinson's interpretation, however, Ms. Beck is a svelte
woman played by Salma Hayek. Better for box office,
presumably. She went to the electric chair with dignity in 1951,
but not so her lover, Ray Hernandez, who went literally kicking
and screaming, carried horizontally by half a dozen guards to
the hot seat while a large audience of men, mostly detectives,
sat in the audience as witnesses. We get a graphic view of the
executions.
"Lonely Hearts," then, the third feature film about two of the
most notorious, cold-blooded killer pairs in American history, is
a taut thriller, one which could have the audience guessing from
the start about the fatal flaw in the relationship between this late
1940s version of Bonnie and Clyde, which was this: given that
Martha was fiercely in love with Ray, wouldn't she seethe with
envy each time she'd witness her man hooking up with his
plethora of women, thereby letting her negative feelings get in
the way of the smooth functioning of their cons? The pressure
she regularly applies to get on with the homicides, even as Ray
hesitates, in one case threatens to drive the man to killing his
own partner–which would not have been a bad idea at all.
The film is structured in a different way from the previous ones,
spending at least as much time on the detectives pursuing the
case as on the sociopaths, principally on Detective Elmer C.
Robinson (John Travolta), whose wife commits suicide ironically
on the very day that she had decorated a cake on the occasion
of their wedding anniversary. (Travolta performs in the role of
the actual paternal grandfather of the director, Todd Robinson.)
This suicide matches up with the apparent suicide, actually a
murder, of a twenty-five year old "lonely hearts" woman found in
a bathtub soaked with blood, to which one detective, Charles
Hildebrandt (James Gandolfini) quips that this would be a good
set-up for a round of Bloody Marys. Straining to pair up the cop
scenarios with those of the killers, writer-director Robinson
strains to show Detective Robinson's budding romance with
squad-mate worker Rene (Laura Dern) with the increasing,
albeit, neurotic affair between Martha (Salma Hayek) and Ray
(Jared Leto).
Among the violent deaths depicted on screen are those of Ray's
lonely hearts partners Janet Long (Alice Krige), executed from
behind by Martha while getting it on with Ray (a perfect sign of
Martha's jealousy); the sudden shooting of a pregnant woman,
partially poisoned by Ray; and the senseless killing of an old
man in a marketplace for his dog.
Filmed in Jacksonville, Florida with Jon Gary Steele's 1940s
perfect sense of period design, "Lonely Hearts" rivets the
attention on sociopaths for whom killing means nothing though
the man, appears to want out to marry an honest woman while
the woman has genuine love for her partner. Scenes of the
police are juxtaposed organically, though one wonders at the
immaturity, the constant horsing around of men in the forties
and fifties who have risen to status of detectives.
Rated R. 100 minutes 2007 by Harvey Karten
Member: NY Film Critics Online
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