Comedienne Goldie Hawn gets gritty with mixed results in CRISSCROSS, a downbeat family drama set in Key West on the eve of the first lunar landing in 1969.
Hawn plays Tracy Cross, abandoned by her Navy-pilot husband who came back from Vietnam stressed-out and unable to cope with domestic life. After sinking into drink for an extended period, John Cross (Keith Carradine) went on a fast, took a vow of silence and eventually divorced Tracy to become a
groundskeeper at a monastery. To keep herself and her space-buff son, Chris (David Arnott), afloat, Tracy has just taken a "promotion" to dancing at the go-go club where she's been working as a bartender. During the day, she also works as a waitress in exchange for room and board at the hotel
where she lives with Chris, who delivers papers to contribute to the household income.
The folks at the hotel are not a savory bunch. Gruff owner Emmett (James Gammon) is salty but basically kind. Not so, though, his hard-bitten cook, who sends Chris on night runs for fish supposedly for the kitchen that are stuffed with cocaine. Chris gets wise to the scheme and begins stealing the
cocaine to sell for extra money so his mom can quit dancing. What he doesn't know is that his buyers, as well as the nice guy, Joe (Arliss Howard), who's come into town and stolen Tracy's heart, are actually undercover drug cops who have targeted the drug ring--and Chris.
Under the direction of former cinematographer Chris Menges (A WORLD APART), CRISSCROSS is an effective mood piece much of the time. But it's all but done in by a pretentious, preachy, reactionary screenplay. You would expect a film directed by a cinematographer to look good (Menges won Oscars for
his camerwork on THE KILLING FIELDS and THE MISSION), and CRISSCROSS doesn't let down on that count. Key West has a burnished, hungover look and mood to match its story about people whose lives have gone quietly and sadly off track. And the performances are generally low-key and effective.
Narrating the story, newcomer Arnott is either onscreen or on the soundtrack virtually every moment of the film's running time. Though his thick South Florida drawl is hard to decipher at times, he does a surprisingly good job of carrying the film with an engaging mixture of precocious worldliness
and baffled innocence. Gammon also stands out as the hotel owner. Goldie Hawn, however, is badly miscast.
Droopiness is not Hawn's style though it's one she's chosen for a performance that never feels completely real. Amid the plug-ugly character players and weather-beaten extras that provide realistic detailing, she just can't help looking, well, like a movie star. Nobody who grew up on Hawn as the
giggly go-go dancer on TV's "Laugh-In" is likely to believe that she despises dancing. Those who didn't aren't likely to, either, since she's opted (and Hawn is an actress with enough clout to demur, if so inclined) to go through the film wearing a pair of cutoffs precisely trimmed to allow just
the slightest hint of her perfectly-shaped derriere to peek through. The problem thus isn't that she dances half-naked for a living, but that she does it in such a toilet, as Hawn's is a bottom that deserves to strut in only the best of sleazy bars.
Howard (FULL METAL JACKET, MEN DON'T LEAVE) is relaxed and likable as always, but he has "nark" written all over him from the second he walks onscreen, and he doesn't have nearly enough to do otherwise. Carradine also gets short shrift in what amounts to a cameo as Hawn's husband. However, Hawn's
miscasting notwithstanding, this is overall a highly watchable cast whose charm goes a long way towards making CRISSCROSS tolerable entertainment.
The real problem is Scott Sommer's screenplay, adapted from his own novella, which is filled with far more portentous themes, symbols and motifs than comfortably fit onscreen, none of them particularly illuminating or original. It doesn't help either that, at its heart, the substance of Sommer's
screenplay is essentially neo-conservative self-flagellation over the 1960s--which would be fine if only the 70s and 80s hadn't come afterwards. CRISSCROSS is a schematic horror story about the so-called disintegration of the nuclear family that gives its characters just enough individuality and
depth to make its politics transparent and intrusive. The incidental pleasures from the cast and Menges's direction provide some compensation, but not quite enough. As message movies go, CRISSCROSS could have used more movie and less message. (Adult situations.) leave a comment