Black Day Blue Night Reviews

BLACK DAY BLUE NIGHT is a well-acted, modestly effective direct- to-video film noir about two women driving from Utah to Phoenix who pick up a mysterious hitchhiker who may or may not be on the lam from a robbery-murder rap. Utah State police lieutenant John Quinn (J.T. Walsh) is investigating an armored car robbery in which a guard who was his best friend was killed. Two of the three robbers were also killed, but a third got away with a suitcase filled with over $1 million. Meanwhile, a foul-mouthed, hard-boiled waitress named Rinda (Michelle Forbes) befriends a mousy woman named Hallie (Mia Sara), after Hallie catches her abusive husband Bo in a hotel room with Rinda. Hallie and Rinda decide to drive to Phoenix. Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker named Dodge (Gil Bellows) who's carrying a suitcase. At a gas station, Dodge tells an inquisitive cop that he's married to Rinda, who plays along with him. Dodge tells Rinda that there's nothing but old records in the suitcase, and that he wasn't involved in any crime. Quinn shows up at the gas station and finds a marked $20 bill from the robbery, and the owner tells him he got it from a woman driving an old red Cadillac. Rinda, Dodge and Hallie drive to a remote canyon, and that night, Hallie and Dodge go skinny-dipping in the hot springs and make love while Rinda watches. The next day, Rinda decides to leave, and Hallie stays with Dodge. Quinn finds Rinda after spotting her Cadillac at a diner, and he tells her about the marked $20 and that there's a $10,000 reward for capturing the robber. Angry that Dodge lied to her, Rinda agrees to show Quinn where Dodge is, and they're joined by a cop from the Navajo nation. At the canyon, Quinn ambushes Dodge, handcuffs him, and holds his head under water to get him to tell where the money is. Dodge denies having any money and when the Navajo cop tries to get Quinn to let Dodge go, Quinn shoots the cop, then Rinda, killing them both. A flashback reveals that Quinn was a participant in the robbery and that he was the one who killed his ex-partner. Hallie tells Quinn that she has the money, then pulls out a gun and kills him. Dodge and Hallie get the money from a bus station locker, then get a hotel room, but her husband Bo shows up while Dodge is out buying a new car, and he forces Hallie to drive away with him. Dodge sees them driving away and chases them to a railroad crossing, and Bo starts shooting at Dodge. As a speeding train approaches, Hallie intentionally drives the car onto the tracks so that Bo can't hurt Dodge, and the car is demolished by the train. Dodge gets out of his car and sees that Hallie is dead. He runs away screaming as a crop-dusting plane flies over him. BLACK DAY BLUE NIGHT is a dark and moody little Southwestern noir in the RED ROCK WEST (1993) vein that's not half-bad, thanks to good performances and a thoughtful script that plays it straight with the rules of the genre. At the very least, it's a refreshing change from the scores of postmodern, ironic Tarantino wannabes, where quirky characters with cute names spout hipster dialogue as they blow people away, and the brutal violence is meant to be funny and cartoonish. Writer-director J. S. Cardone's solidly constructed script offers a number of twists and turns, and though most of them are fairly predictable, such as Quinn's true motive, they're still effective since the tongue-in-cheek attitude is kept to a minimum. The crosses and double-crosses sometimes become confusing, and it's never really clearly explained how Hallie ended up with the money (Bo may have been involved in the robbery), but an honest attempt is made to give the characters some depth and background history, even if this results in some long, monotonous dialogue scenes. The parched and spooky desert milieu is nicely observed and the acting is superior for this kind of low-budget production, with Forbes, Sara, Bellows, and Walsh creating believable, substantial characters. Unfortunately, the ending is not really emotionally satisfying and seems arbitrary, despite remaining admirably true to the genre by not copping out with a clever, audience-pleasing twist which would allow Dodge and Hallie to drive into the sunset together with their suitcase full of cash. (Violence, extreme profanity, nudity, sexual situations.)