2 Days in the Valley Reviews

Three contract killers (James Spader, Charlize Theron and Danny Aiello), two loopy cops (Jeff Daniels and Eric Stoltz), one suicidal TV movie director (Paul Mazursky) and a wacky assortment of California neurotics (Marsha Mason, Glenne Headly, Austin Pendleton, Peter Horton et al.) cross paths in L.A.'s so uncool it might be hip San Fernando Valley. It sounds lazy to say actor turned writer director John Herzfeld is doing a Tarantino, but it's easier than going through the PULP FICTION checklist, item by item: Dense, meandering, self-referential dialogue. Outrageous -- perhaps divinely ordained -- synchronicity. Chic world-weariness. Sleazy sexual innuendo. Eccentricity as characterization. There's even a perverse John Travolta connection: Herzfeld helped kill Travolta's feature career with 1983's TWO OF A KIND, whereas Tarantino helped breathe life back into it. It's not that this is a bad, blackly comic slice-of-lowlife: It's just that you've just seen it all before.