Good movie but grossly overrated

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

I've always admired Christopher Walken's work. It hardly matters what he does. But here, he got away from me after the first few minutes, bouncing around in black silk capes, flapping blankets, puffing a monster cigar, wearing a wig that causes him to resembles maybe Mick Jagger circa 1980. It's a positive embarrassment.The rest of the performers aren't any better, and Steven Bauer is considerably worse, reenacting his Cuban character from "Scarface." Anne Heche and Joan Chen have a delicate love scene, the film's only redeeming feature. It's nice, seeing two beautiful women making love, especially knowing that at least one of them isn't entirely straight.The main plot, such as it is, has to do with Anne Heche being blackmailed into being a stooge for the LAPD. On her first encounter with an officer, he rapes her. Everybody's rotten and corrupt. I'm not arguing that this position isn't realistic, just that it's a little depressing.The story takes too long to develop and the actors don't quite put over the character touches. Allen Garfield, absent too long from the screen, acts like a moron and is unnecessary. It would have been better if, the moment the two young ladies realized they were in love, they'd gotten on an airplane with all the money they had at hand and flown to Guadalajara. They -- and the audience -- would have been spared the pain that came later.

Evil money launderer Christopher Walken calls for a $1500 hooker (Anne Heche) who is actually a banker during the day. FBI undercover man Steven Bauer (posing as Walken's assistant) blackmails Heche to cooperate with him in the hopes of bringing Walken down. Of course he also has plans to bring Heche down too (he doesn't tell her that though). Soon Heche meets Walken's super-sexy wife (Joan Chen of "The Last Emperor" fame) and they become infatuated with each other sexually. Walken plans to use Chen as the fall-person so he can leave the country for good with all his money. Tangled little web teases and tantalizes, but ultimately this is a total destruction. The film is cheap (in more ways than one) as most of the filming locations are motel rooms, bathrooms, restaurants and house kitchens. The screenplay goes more towards the soft-core realm than it does toward "Pulp Fiction" or "The Usual Suspects". Totally unsatisfying as Walken's unintentionally hilarious bad guy routine tires fast, Bauer's stupid muscle-bound cop/thug routine bores fast and the two ladies do their best to hide their lack of talent by getting naked together fast. All this is to no avail though. British director Donald Cammell (who had a career where his best work were specials about the music group U2) committed suicide shortly after this film was completed. Turkey (0 stars out of 5).

I remember reading a review of this in one of those phone book sized movie guides you can get at a book store. They gave it their lowest rating, saying that it looked like it was all improvised in a series of motel room and apartments.Yea, I can kind of see it.Anyways, Wild Side is an OK noir film of sorts about a bank worker by day, high class prostitute by night (Heche) who gets involved with a crime boss (Walken) and his sexy girlfriend (Chen). Heche and Chen end up falling in love, and concoct a plan of sorts to get away.The film probably would have faded away if it wasn't for the scorcher of a love scene between Heche and Chen. With an agonizingly erotic set up (a long dinner date between the two, followed by a first kiss in the womens bathroom), the actual love scene is allowed to play out nice and slow, in a big bedroom with the summer light and breeze blowing in. Seriously guys (and girls, I guess) this is everything you could want in a scene like this.I wish I could say the movie around it was memorable enough to live up to that kind of glory, but it really doesn't. I'm sure Donald Cammell was a great director, and it's probably real sad that the film was chopped up before he could finish it to it's satisfaction. But I've got a feeling that whatever state this movie was supposed to in, it would have turned out the same.Eroticism aside, the lesbian scene is asthetically like a breath of fresh air. It's bright, and wide open in the way it plays out across the screen. Compared to that, the rest of the movie really does play too dark; It really is kind of like sitting with your legs crossed on the floor in the corners of dark apartments while listening to other people talk. Dreary, in other words.By the way, check out the Canadian video cover for this one compared to the static "3 portraits" cover we got in America. A classic example of how just how puritanical our culture can be sometimes.

The story goes like this : Donald Cammell died , heartbroken by the producers' typical butchering of his film, which was released as a "straight to late Friday night" sleazy thriller; ...and, with hindsight, it's easy to believe this. Thankfully, the director's assistant was able to re-cut the movie, according to the artist's wishes and, as a result, ... "Wild Side" is a mindsuck ("suck" is not the actual appropriate word I had in mind here ) of a masterpiece.It grips you from the first scene (what on Earth is going on here, who's what, is the cop bad, is the bad girl good ??), through its barely credible tortuous twists and double-crossings, until the unescapable -and yet unpredictable- end. Followed by another end, of course.The involvement of the actors, their very limited number -hardly anyone else than the damned foursome dares cross the threshold into Cammell's world- works to perfection, as it introduces some kind of claustrophobic atmosphere (there is supposed to be a world outside these half-lit hotel rooms, but we won't see much of it until the last sequence). These four characters drift in and out, each less trustworthy than the last : past ten minutes, it will be hard to remember who's supposed to be forming an alliance against who. Key word here : intensity. Hey, the, er..., climax of the film involves the -explicitly not homosexual- gangster (almost or not : up to you to find out) raping his male driver, an undercover cop, just to prove his love to a prostitute ! Confused ? Yes, you will be, and that's nothing compared to the actual script : everyone works very hard to double-cross everyone else, not least their lover.And now, let's tackle the major asset of this film : its acting.Amazing. By now, it is pretty obvious to everyone that Anne Heche is a truly terrific actress, all ambiguity and secret resolves. She certainly doesn't disappoint her growing number of admirers here. Steven Bauer , who plays the cop, has -quite simply- never been near as impressive as he is here. But the cherry on the cake, the surge after the lollipop, the tour de force extraordinaire, has to be credited to who else but Christopher Walken.Christopher Walken, as we know, IS Christopher Walken -no introduction needed, but in "Wild Side", he just... delivers his most demented performance to date, if you can start to imagine. His endlessly fascinating ambisexual reptilian face, his weird yellowy skin, his eyebrowless laser eyes -not to forget a hair rock stars would advertise soda for-, the man is scary beyond frightening. He's not deranged, he's from another planet ! Nearly incomprehensible. Let us be very clear here : "Wild Side" is an absolute must for all Christopher Walken fans out there.There will never be another Donald Cammell film, and that's a real tragedy. Especially when you bear in mind that the man co-authored mandatory-cult-movie "Peformance", yes, the very one "Performance" that sent E. Fox over the edge for a few years. Thanks God, Christopher Walken still walks amongst us lesser mortals (and occasionally steals an entire Tarantino scripted movie by only appearing five minutes).