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Review: You'll get your kicks with 'Kicked in the Head'
September 17, 1997
Web posted at: 11:32 p.m. EDT (0332 GMT)From Reviewer Paul Tatara
(CNN) -- The first 45 minutes of Matthew Harrison's new low-budget comedy, "Kicked in the Head," is the loosest, fastest, funniest stuff I've seen all year.
The problem is that the 45 minutes only lasts 45 minutes, and then the screenplay quickly loses its delirious momentum. I still got a charge out of the inventive, elliptical dialogue, though.
There's an intentional slapdash quality to the adventures of Redmond (Kevin Corrigan, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Harrison) as he ambles aimlessly through Manhattan's Lower East Side, trying to find some connection, any connection, to the world he's inhabiting. Redmond, whining and gasping in fear every step of the way, is a guy on the verge of a psychotic meltdown who still somehow manages to believe that his perils are the venue through which he will find "the truth."
What there is of a plot is set in motion when his shyster Uncle Sam (James Woods, somewhat engaging for the first time since "Casino") gives him a paper bag containing a brick of cocaine that he needs to deliver to a guy on 62nd Street, but there's a shootout, and Redmond, (thoroughly panicked, but that's how he operates throughout the film), ends up taking the coke with him.
He's been evicted from his apartment, which burned down that morning anyway, so he winds up crashing on the couch at his friend Stretch's place. Stretch is played by Michael Rapaport, in one of the most hugely entertaining performances of the year.
Stretch is a gun-wielding lunatic who makes a habit of patting himself on the back for becoming what he perceives to be the beer distribution king of Lower Manhattan. Until now, I've never quite grasped Rapaport's appeal (I could easily have lived without his one-note performance in "Mighty Aphrodite"), but he's got Stretch's limited perspective down cold. The movie captures the everyday New Yorker's frenetically-paced life perfectly (no lazy wine and cheese parties, a la rich-guy Woody Allen), and Rapaport transposes that pace into his tumbling, heroically self-reverential speech.
"Kicked in the Head," from October films, movie trailer.
Stretch can't just agree with you, he has to say, "Right-right-right. OK. Right," and his obsession with being at "the summit, the peak, the pinnacle" of beer distribution nearly had me on the floor. He offers to give Redmond a job loading trucks, but Redmond passes, since he's pretending to be writing a book on "the truth" and is looking for "something bigger."
"What's bigger than this," Stretch responds, majestically sweeping his hand across several pallets loaded up with brew, "this is beer!"
I want to say that there's a nutty sub-plot concerning the Beer O'Rama guys trying to kill Stretch for under-selling them (a conceit that seems lifted from the ice cream wars in Bill Forsythe's "Comfort and Joy"), but the entire movie is comprised of vaguely-attended-to-minutiae that comes and goes in spurts. This is charming when things are rolling along at a steady clip, but evolves into a nuisance when the wheels suddenly stop turning. Early on, Redmond sees an attractive flight attendant (Linda Fiorentino) quietly crying to herself on the B train, but she rebuffs his offer to try to cheer her up. Later, he pulls a fortune out of a fortune cookie that reads, "Your attendant godling has lost her way," and he takes this to mean that Fiorentino is his path to salvation. He has to find her. This is sort of sweet, but now things start getting ironically thoughtful, and the juice soon runs out of what's going on.
"Kicked in the Head" movie clip. (October films) 39 seconds (AM)
1.5 MB/39 sec. QuickTime movie
The big bright spot in this part of the movie is a long scene in an airport lounge between Fiorentino and Corrigan that is achingly real. Redmond recognizes the loser in himself, but flatly refuses to accept that he's a child. He's a man, he insists, and he thinks he's falling in love with the obvious woman sitting next to him. Fiorentino is cynical, but warms up to him in quite a believable way. It's simply a great scene, but it really feels like it fell out of a different movie. The tone at this point is wavering too much for the story elements to hang together all the way to the end. I should repeat, though, that this is top-notch writing from a couple of guys who only seem to be discovering their true voice.
There is a gentle supporting performance from Lili Taylor, as an ex-girlfriend of Redmond's who won't accept that their relationship is over, but it doesn't contain any kind of wrap-up. It's just left hanging. Taylor is charming, but the highlight of the supporting roles is Burt Young as a roughneck who is trying to get the brick of cocaine back from Redmond. Once again, the bizarre dialogue is the key. When Corrigan gives Young an unsatisfactory answer to a question concerning the doomed coke transaction, Young says, "That's vague. I like Precise. With a 'P.'"
There's also a Russian hit-man (Olek Krupa) who, in the middle of throttling Corrigan, uses a small book to look up the phrase, "I will kill you horribly."
I assume that would be kill with a "K."
"Kicked in the Head" contains gunplay, recreational drug use, violence, and a generous portion of profanity. There is also a night of sexual escapades between Corrigan and Fiorentino. Rated R. 90 minutes.
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