Nearly 20 years after OD'ing on heroin in DRUGSTORE COWBOY kick-started her career, Heather Graham is back on the spike. File under guilty pleasures.
It's November 1 — the Day of the Dead — and aspiring singer-songwriter turned junkie waitress Hope (Graham) whiles away the hours on yet another night shift at a Los Angeles diner by rehashing the past few months, which she spent with her ex-boyfriend Will (Jeremy Sisto). Like many young, idealistic women, Hope left Cleveland for L.A. with dreams of making it big as a recording artist, and scruffy drifter Will, whom she met one afternoon on the beach, seemed to really believe in her talent. And when times got tough and success seemed more elusive than ever, Will had just the thing to numb the pain: heroin. Soon the marks on Hope's arms are all potential producers needed to see before showing her the door, and now, on the Day of the Dead, Hope is once again single, slinging hash and trying to stay clean. But tonight every table she waits on seems to represent the mistakes of her past and the possibilities — good and bad — for her future: a young singer (Valerie Azlynn) about to sign with an enthusiastic agent (Mark Sheppard); a pair of filmmakers looking to cast a girl just like Hope for their movie (coyly titled "Broken"); a trio of Ecstasy-dazed clubgoers, one of whom (Jessica Stroup) makes out with Hope in the back hallway; a Hollywood madam (Linda Hamilton) who offers Hope work; two of Hope's junkie friends (Jake Busey, Chad Cunningham), who are waiting to score some smack; and a mysterious bag lady (Tess Harper) who seems to know all about Will, who's racing back to L.A. in a stolen El Camino in hopes of getting his baby back.
While not as insane as THE BOOST (1988) or as ludicrous as REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (no rampaging refrigerators menacing pill-popping grannies here), director Alan White's follow-up to RISK (2000) is still pretty entertaining, if not in the way he intended. Earnest performances by Sisto and Graham, who does a pretty good impersonation of a would-be starlet whose career hasn’t gone as she’d hoped, enliven what's essentially a lurid drugsploitation drama that suddenly veers into PETRIFIED FOREST territory. Absurd to say the least, and the moment in which Hope literally sees herself in the faces of all the diner patrons is an all-time howler. The appropriately zonked-out soundtrack songs are by the Brian Jonestown Massacre. --Ken Fox
