02/21/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Blood and Wine
Familiar detective caper minus the detective

*** (out of five)
Starring Jack Nicholson, Michael Caine, Stephen Dorff, Jennifer Lopez, Judy Davis. A Fox Searchlight picture written by Nick Villiers and Alison Cross, directed by Bob Rafelson. Rated R, contains violence, profanity, adult themes. Running time: 102 minutes.

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

At first, I was surprised that 20th Century Fox is putting its crime drama Blood and Wine out under its specialized Fox Searchlight Pictures logo.

That subsidiary usually has fewer prints of a film in circulation and often distributes to art-house theaters rather than the big commercial multiplex cinemas.

After all, Blood and Wine stars Jack Nicholson, a powerhouse draw for such films as Batman and Mars Attacks!, plus Michael Caine.

But on second thought, Caine's star peaked long ago and Blood and Wine, a not very inviting title, is a dark-hearted, film-noir caper that dwells on greed and anger. It has all the ingredients of those movies from the late '40s -- a desperate man, stolen goods, double-crosses, a beautiful woman, even Key Largo. The only thing missing is the hard-bitten detective to sort it all out.

Nicholson's Alex Gates is a Miami wine merchant with a failing business, a wife with a bad leg and bad hair (Judy Davis), a sultry Cuban girlfriend (Jennifer Lopez) on the side, a stepson (Stephen Dorff) who's also in love with the girlfriend and a consumptive partner (Caine) who doesn't trust Alex and coughs up lots of blood. Caine's Vic assures Alex that "there's no such thing as honor among thieves" as he methodically goes about his work of safecracking. This turns out to be all too true as the body count mounts.

The object of everyone's desire is a glittering multi-diamond necklace that Alex and Vic plan to steal from the home of a rich couple (the man is a sleaze and his wife is crass, so we don't care much about them) and sell for a lot of bucks in New York.

But things go disastrously and surprisingly and often very cleverly wrong as the plans keep getting turned inside out by outside events. The script by Nick Villiers and Alison Cross is funny and cool and fits together like a jigsaw puzzle. And the actors are in top form, especially Nicholson, who alternates between sympathetic moments and angry ballistics, sometimes in the same scene. It gives Alex more than one dimension and makes him surprisingly sympathetic, a man forced by circumstance into a tightening situation.

Also good are Caine as the shrewd and doubting Vic, whose anger erupts even more stunningly than Alex's, and Davis as the unhappy wife who has long ago submerged her anger and sorrow in drugs and drink.

Counterbalancing them are Dorff as the decent young man who's trying to get out from under all this unhappiness and build a life, and the sunny Lopez as the Cuban Gabrielle who decides to use her sexpot power to her best advantage.

Director Bob Rafelson keeps Blood and Wine hitting emotional dynamite and emphasizing the cynical lines delivered by Nicholson. Alex asks his nosy wife, "Don't you have physical therapy tonight?" when her snooping gets too close.

Rafelson builds on Nicholson's caged anger, which served him so well when he long ago directed Nicholson in one of Hollywood's most famous scenes of simmering rage -- the diner sequence in Five Easy Pieces (he also worked with Nicholson on Head, The King of Marvin Gardens and The Postman Always Rings Twice).

Fascinating as the characters are, however, one doesn't exactly become enmeshed in their greedy schemes.

That's where Dorff should come in. He's the film's one decent character. But his on-again, off-again feelings toward Gabrielle keep getting in the way. He's not exactly heroic material to go riding off into the sunset with.

And that, in the end, is just what Blood and Wine asks us to do.