De Palma, Lithgow, the whole shebang

I love John Lithgow, and he does really turn in a great performance here, but are we hurting for great Lithgow showings? No. Is the movie worthy of him? Allow me to pontificate.

There are a few Brian De Palma movies that really do it for me, Carrie, Dressed to Kill, even Scarface is kind of fun (though not good enough to warrant its place on every 18 year college boy's wall) and I really should be searching before that time for the gems, though Blowout is on my list to see, but I recently started watching his more recent films and Raising Cain is a prime example of everything that began to go wrong. It's so close to great, but more accurately could be described as trash.

My main issue with this movie is the ongoing battle between De Palma's refined visual sense and the nearly incomprehensible plot. Now I'm not dumb, I think, so I am not sitting wondering when the credits roll what happened, but I did feel rather exhausted. The movie creates new realities for you like every 5 minutes, and the first few times you're like oh, I guess that was a dream, or that wasn't a dream, or that happened before this, or this person's not dead, or yes they are, or no they're not. I can keep up, but that doesn't mean that it feels satisfying. Now if it's intentionally unsatisfying, that would be one thing, but none of the story choices seem like they're choices at all, and intentionally unsatisfying can actually be extremely satisfying if it's done well (see Funny Games.) This just seems sloppy and "intentionally unsatisfying" is what you would say if you fucked up and had no better excuse.

While all this hamfisty plot mania is going on, you can tell that every shot and scene is so carefully visually considered to the extreme. I couldn't help but just be annoyed that he didn't spend 5% less energy on the visuals (they would still be great) and put that energy towards coherence.

So it's very annoying, and if that's the point, then bravo, I guess.

The only positive reason to watch is the off the wall performance by John Lithgow, but you're better off watching Harry and the Hendersons, The World According to Garp, or if you need Lithgow to be crazy to like him, then watch Dexter season 4, where he was flawless.