Oliver Stone directed this John Ridley screenplay adapted from Ridley's novel Stray Dogs. A drifter (Sean Penn) eludes Las Vegas collection agents and arrives in a small town where he decides to linger after his car has a breakdown. Here he gets involved with the locals, including an unhappily married couple -- a businessman (Nick Nolte) and his seductive, femme-fatale wife (Jennifer Lopez). A trailer trash teen (Claire Danes) also approaches him in an effort to get away from her abusive
boyfriend (Joaquin Phoenix). Tensions in the town escalate, eventually leading to murder. Stone wanted to change the title from U-Turn back to Stray Dogs but encountered a problem with Akira Kurosawa, who felt it was too similar to his detective classic, Stray Dog (1949) with Toshiro Mifune. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
It's so empty emotionally it's difficult to see what the point is, unless it's the celebration of emptiness, an aim that has become so familiar recently it hardly seems worth the trouble everyone has gone to.
Penn turns in a crisp, unfussy comic performance, Lopez vamps like a scorpion in heat, Nolte sustains a pretty good John Huston impression, and Thornton is mighty peculiar as the mechanic from hell.
U-Turn is just your basic film noir, only with all the walloping, bravura technique that Stone brings to the similarly far-fetched premises of his overtly political films.
An amazing Neo-Noir/Western that's almost impossible to not enjoy on at least some level. The story is incredibly well-written and the characters are perfectly twisted. Sean Penn delivers a great performance as Bobby Cooper, in debt and in need of a break. There's also soe great supporting performances from Billy Bob
Thorton, Nick Nolte and Joaquin Phoenix to name a few. It's very much the same kind of irony that is present in most Noirs, that you never get off easy. It's also one of the best shot Oliver Stone movies, but that tends to be the case with every single one of his movies. I loved the use of over-exposure and 16mm film every once in a while.
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