Baja Reviews

Itching to be an existential thriller, BAJA sports a screenplay so self-important and characters so wafer-thin that it might better be described as "Sartre a la screen." Directed with irksome film school bravado, BAJA is covered with cinematic flashiness to distract attention from the fact that its slavishly-delivered ironies have been explored with greater depth in other, better movies. On a downward spiral since her mother's death under questionable circumstances, heiress Bebe Stone (Molly Ringwald) takes up with a small-time drug courier, Axel (Donal Logue). When Nelson (Nelson Lyon), another drug dealer, rips them off, Axel shoots Nelson's representative, and the scared couple flees south of the border. Concurrently, Bebe's father Stone (Corbin Bernsen) (whom Bebe believes responsible for her mother's death) coaxes Bebe's ex-husband Michael (Michael A. Nickles) into trekking to Baja to help retrieve his hellion daughter. Meanwhile, a touchy hit man named Burns (Lance Henriksen) is hot on Axel and Bebe's trail, too. Cultivating Michael's friendship in Mexico, crafty Burns closes in on Axel whom he locates by terrorizing (then killing) Axel's Baja connection. What Bebe doesn't realize is that disgruntled Nelson isn't Burns' employer; her father is. So anxious is Burns to complete his assignment, he causes a church shoot-out that leaves innocent bystanders and the policia dead. While Bebe continues to turn a deaf ear to Michael's prudent counsel, resentful Axel turns on Michael. Courtesy of Burns, Axel is killed for blackmailing Stone with evidence of guilt in his wife's murder. With his job finally done, Burns leaves Bebe and Michael unharmed and flees homeward. Unresolved plot issues surround this movie like buzzards circling a dead screenwriter in the Baja desert. (For instance, wouldn't Stone also want his daughter silenced? Why is Burns such a sloppy assassin? Wouldn't someone so nonchalant about human life wipe out Bebe and Michael as a matter of course?) A generous interpretation suggests BAJA's writer-director is after bigger game than simply updating a 40s film noir to the 90s drug culture; perhaps BAJA is intended as a philosophical statement about degrees of criminal culpability and the value judgments of the amoral. Even so, the film is padded with so many tourist shots you'd think BAJA had been commissioned by the Baja Chamber of Commerce. And for the final nail in the coffin, this sun-drenched bore can't even manage a car chase with any pep--something less pretentious action dramas can handle in their sleep. Playing yet another quirky character who marches to a different drummer, Henriksen single-handedly keeps the plot mechanics whirring and the lofty soul-searching in its place. However, one does wonder how Henriksen's hit man character, Burns, stays in business given his propensity for shooting everyone in sight. Did the director consciously intend that the only fully dimensional, sympathetic character in his film be a sloppy assassin? (Graphic violence, extreme profanity, extensive nudity, adult situations, substance abuse.)