Another Day In Paradise
1998
Stars: James Wood, Melanie Griffith, Vincent Kartheiser, Natasha Gregson Wagner.
Director: Larry Clark.
Plot: Bobbie and Rosie(Vincent Kartheiser and Natasha Gregson Wagner) are two junkie lovers who are running low on drugs and money. Bobbie's uncle, Mel(James Woods) comes along to try and help out his nephew and his girlfriend. He has a girlfriend himself, Sid(Melanie Griffith). The four of them go on a road trip which involves sex, drugs, and bank robberies. The two kids get deeper involved into drugs such as heroine and cocaine which makes them uncapable of carrying on. This leads them into trouble because their drug deals start going wrong and everything starts to go downhill. Rosie gets heavily into the drugs and is high most of the time. They meet up with many people, some who give them shelter to hang out until they get better, but others who try to rip them off and run away with their dope. As the movie progresses, everyone starts getting on everyone else's nerves and they all begin to fall apart. Greed and violence start to take over their lives and that's when they start fighting with each other instead of working as a group. Mel is the leader of the pack, and he doesn't mind using violence toward any of the other three to get them to follow his instructions.
My Thoughts: Since this was from the director of Kids which I had seen, I knew that this wasn't going to be a normal road trip kind of movie. There is a lot of violence in this movie and the director isn't afraid to show it graphically. For example, in the first opening of the movie, Bobbie is trying to break and steal money from a vending machine, but when a security guard finds out what he's doing, he kicks the living shit out of him. Also, there is a scene when a drug deal goes wrong and there is a lot of beating up and blood going all over the place. Like other people have said, I would compare this to Bonnie and Clyde, but the difference in this being that the four of them are druggies who cause a lot of fighting within the group, while in Bonnie and Clyde, they mostly got along and just robbed banks. When we see the actors shooting up or snorting lines, it is very graphic and also their high is shown on screen. James Woods' character pissed me off because he thought he was god over the four of them and thought that whatever he said was always right. Also, he didn't seem to care about any of them that much, while Bobbie and Rosie really seemed to care about each other. This movie definately does show a lot of onscreen violence and drug use, but it's use to show how this people's lives were. I really enjoyed it, but some may turn away due to all the violence and drug use in it.
Rating:
