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| Los Angeles Times -"Stuck" on a grim, gory reality |
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The LA Times
By Jay A. Fernandez
March 12, 2008
'Stuck' on a grim, gory reality
"This hasn't been a good day for me, you know?"
So says the beaten-down, homeless, jobless Tom to an indifferent employment office drone early on in "Stuck," a wicked little film that's been careening around the festival circuit over the last year. Poor Tom. He has no idea how much of an agonizing understatement this will turn out to be.
Written by John Strysik ("Tales From the Darkside") and directed by "Re-Animator" mad scientist Stuart Gordon, "Stuck" first screened in Cannes in May, then turned up in the Midnight Madness section in Toronto and now just took the Jury Prize for best narrative at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival.
Based on a real event, "Stuck" hangs its grim, and grimly funny, B-movie plot on a simple premise. A young woman ( Mena Suvari) driving home after a night of partying and drugs plows into down-on-his-fortunes Tom ( Stephen Rea), who lands broken and impaled in her windshield. In a panic, she stashes the car, with bloody, groaning human hood ornament, in her garage, hoping that he will just expire.
Unlike the ill-fated real guy, who tragically died two days later, Tom does not, and the movie consists of his grueling efforts to dislodge himself as she goes to increasingly selfish lengths to protect herself. (The real woman, with whom Strysik had no contact, is serving a 50-year prison sentence; Strysik drew the broad strokes from the police report, which you can cringe through at www.thesmokinggun.com /archive/mallard1.html.)
"Initially, I was hesitant because I really didn't want to exploit this guy -- it was such an awful thing," says Strysik. "But then I thought, 'We're not exploiting the guy. We're doing what should have been done -- [telling a story] where he wins.' "
Strysik mixed ink-black humor, gore and suspense from Tom's gruesome crucible, so it's the type of film that stirs viewers to shout at the characters and their decisions (one viewer yelled, "Kill the [expletive]!," during a climactic scene). "Watching this with an audience is like watching 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show,' " says Strysik. "People are just screaming at the screen."
Noting the response to the film last fall (and surely seeing a cult hit in the making), ThinkFilm has come on to give "Stuck" a theatrical release May 30. If you want to see it before then, you'll have to head down to AFI Dallas in April, where it should stir up some bonus brouhaha since the incident happened next door in Fort Worth.
A word of caution, however, if you do: Take a cab to the theater. Don't walk.
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