The three main reasons that I was interested in this film were that it's set in the 1980's Los Angeles party scene, Mickey Rourke was in it, and it was adapted from a Brett Easton Ellis novel. So despite the many bad reviews I decided to give it a shot on blu-ray.
The film centers on multiple stories all going on around each other at the same time. One about a young adult rich boy Graham Sloan played by Jon Foster, his disgruntled parents played by Billy Bob Thornton and Kim Basinger, a musician on the brink of insanity, a boy stuck in Hawaii with his asshole father played by Lou Taylor Pucci and Chris Isaak, and two guys who are all of a sudden involved with some very bad people after kidnapping a young boy, played by Mickey Rourke and Brad Renfro.
Though all the stories are pretty entertaining, they don't really offer too much into the characters that surround them. We really just see them in these moments and have no back story or know what they're thinking about whatsoever. It's kind of like a messy version of Less Than Zero also penned by Ellis, which I loved. The real attraction I had for this film wasn't the star studded cast, it was that I love seeing people self destruct in Los Angeles and then finding themselves again. Even if they don't find themselves I think that it's a beautiful thing to watch on screen if done well and it's something that can be very depressing and moving at the same time. Although it's done in a mediocre way here and I wish they focused on Grahams story much more, it's still an entertaining cinematic experience.
The film looks really great on blu-ray and the score definitely wasn't unforgettable. It's a film that can be thrown in at a party while having some drinks and watch in the background or it can be a film that you put in one night to analyze artistic cinematography and daring teen sex and drug use in filmmaking. Either way I recommend it. 3 and 1/2 outa 5.
