<<Also "After Dark, My Sweet" and "The Kill-Off"
>>
I just had the extreme displeasure of seeing THIS WORLD, THEN
THE FIREWORKS
the other night. It was the antithesis of everything that
makes great Jim
Thompson. Badly acted (Billy Zane may make millions off the
same character in
several flicks), horribly scored (the "composer" veers from
Peter Gunn rip-
offs to variations on Ricky Ricardo's Baba-Loo tunes), and
worst of all,
condescending. The best thing about Thompson is that he makes
the assumption
that his readers CAN read and think at the same time. Not so
the writer and
director of the film. Thompson's novella left things up in
the air at the
climax. The movie not only spells it out, but rubs your face
in it. I had high
hopes for this one, but I can see that any future Jim
Thompson novels will
probably suffer from the Quentus Tarantitis syndrome.
Peter Enfantino
bare*bones/deadline press
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