Far from being a revisionist take on the form like George Miller's THE ROAD WARRIOR or Kathryn Bigelow's NEAR DARK, DELUSION is a classic road movie, an exercise in self-discovery that unfolds against a backdrop of America's endless highways. "Wrong turns," "detours" and "dead ends" all
exist simultaneously as literal entities and metaphorical concepts, and the George O'Brien (Jim Metzler) who comes out of Death Valley isn't the same man who went in.
O'Brien is a Silicon Valley executive going through a career crisis: his company has just been bought out, his design team is about to be disbanded and all he wants is to realize the dream of starting his own company and getting out of the corporate rat race. The takeover emboldens him to
embezzle a quarter of a million dollars, and with the money stashed in his car, he takes off for Reno--via Death Valley--to start again. Along the way, George is overtaken by a weaving, speeding car that veers off the road and overturns. He picks up its occupants, Chevy (Kyle Secor) and Patti
(Jennifer Rubin), and agrees to drive them to the next town, where they can rent another car. When Chevy pulls a gun, it becomes apparent that George has made the classic road-movie mistake: hitchhikers are always disasters of one kind or another, and it doesn't pay to pick them up.
Chevy, it ensues, is a hit man on his way to a job. Patti, a space cadet with a knockout body, deals with the situation by seeing only what she wants to see and ignoring the rest. They drive deep into the desert to kill Larry (Jerry Orbach), Chevy's friend and mentor, and George realizes that if
he wants to come out of this encounter at all, he's going to have to forget the displaced ruthlessness of the business world and fight for his life on an altogether more straightforward level. He tries to escape, only to be recaptured and left for dead in the desert while Patti and Chevy escape in
his car. George tracks them to a deserted motel and finds Patti alone; Chevy has gone to Las Vegas to collect his fee for killing Larry. Patti has found the money in the wheel well, but tells neither Chevy nor George. When Chevy returns, George confronts him. Disgusted with both of them, Patti
tosses a bag containing the money at their feet and drives off. The men are left poised, each with a gun pointed at the other.
Belgian-born director and co-writer Carl-Jan Colpaert demonstrates a razor-sharp appreciation of the metaphorical splendor of Death Valley, its natural wonders and manmade artifacts alike, and the production values he achieved on a minimal budget (under $1 million) are nothing short of
astonishing. DELUSION's self-conscious manipulation of Western iconography is equally effective, and gives the film a resonance that makes its images stick long after the movie is over.
Released at the same time as Ridley Scott's controversial but mainstream THELMA & LOUISE, another reworking of road-movie conventions, DELUSION holds its own without benefit of stars or a hit-studded soundtrack. Its tight, claustrophobic story is extremely well acted by Secor, Metzler and Rubin,
as well as a quirky supporting cast, some of whom have only a single scene in which to make an impression. A European who's lived in the US for years, Colpaert's take on a singularly American genre is familiar without being contemptuous, witty without ever verging on parody. (Violence, profanity,
sexual situations.) leave a comment