29 Palms

Plot

Leonardo Ricagni, director of the 1998 Uruguayan comedy El Chevrolé, helmed this straight-to-video ensemble crime thriller, in which the main character is a bag of money. Initially belonging to a casino on an Indian reservation, The Chief (Russell Means) hires The Hitman (Chris O'Donnell) to track the bag down when it turns up missing. As The Hitman gets closer and closer to finding it, the bag of dough passes through the hands of several other nameless characters, including The Waitress, played by Rachael Leigh Cook, The Drifter, played by Jeremy Davies, and The Sheriff, played by Keith David. Before hitting American video-store shelves in 2003, 29 Palms screened at the München Fantasy Filmfest and the Cologne Fantasy Film Festival, both in Germany. The film should not be confused with the 2004 Bruno Dumont picture of the same name. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

Review

One of the many amateurish assumptions in Leonardo Ricagni's 29 Palms, an amateurish production if ever there was one, is that merely setting a crime movie in the California desert gives it a grubby lowlife mystique. This film is grubby alright, and it's got lowlifes to spare. But mystique? Not on your life. Ricagni's humorless film is one of the sloppiest, most hackneyed stepchildren of Quentin Tarantino's success, filled with Mexican standoffs, moronic criminals, severed limbs, unlikely coincidental meetings, characters meandering down the middle of empty desert highways, cruddy-looking freeze frames, and pointless flashbacks to inconsequential events we saw two minutes earlier. The landscape is littered with guns-n-thugs movies that went straight to video, but 29 Palms reeks more than the others, just because of the talent involved. Every single malevolent jerk who appears here is someone you've heard of, from Chris O'Donnell to Jeremy Davies, Rachael Leigh Cook to Russell Means, Michael Lerner to Michael Rapaport, Keith David to Bill Pullman. What do they all have in common? Blindness to the insipid project they were getting themselves involved in. Ricagni and screenwriter Tino Lucente commit every sin it's possible to commit, from the confused and insensitive theme (something about the spiritual world of Native Americans) to the inept narrative logic (the requisite "bag of money" is never where the previous scene says it should be) to just plain awful technique (which covers everything else). Crime movies usually mask their flaws with the occasional sharp set piece, likable character or funny mishap, but 29 Palms whiffs here as well, in three swinging strikes. The capper on 93 minutes of genre clichés and general stupidity: When the credits roll, you realize none of the characters were given names. The embarrassed stars of 29 Palms might just wish for that same anonymity. ~ Derek Armstrong, Rovi

Cast

• Chris O'Donnell - The Hitman

Keith David - The Sheriff; Michael Lerner - The Judge; Russell Means - The Chief; Jon Polito - The Security Guard; Bill Pullman; Michael Rapaport - The Cop; Jeremy Davies - The Drifter; Rachael Leigh Cook - The Waitress

Credit

Leonardo Ricagni - Director, Marc Forby - Producer, Tino Lucente - Screenwriter

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