#23: Red Rock West (1994)

My name is Ed and twice a week I watch a Nicolas Cage film and then play the lottery using numbers inspired by that film.

Last time, I watched Deadfall, which the Rotten Tomatoes algorithm has deemed the worst Nicolas Cage film, with a 0% score. This time I have watched Red Rock West, which has the highest Rotten Tomatoes score for a Nic Cage film, at 95%. [2020 note: It is now only the highest scoring *live action* Nic Cage film]

Deadfall is quite bad, but it’s definitely not the worst film Nicolas Cage has ever been in — it’s not even close to being the worst film I’ve watched in my quest to win the lottery. And Red Rock West is a fine enough film, but definitely not the best I’ve watched so far (and certainly not when counting Nicolas Cage films I watched before I tried to start winning the lottery). Trying to algorithmically create an ‘objective’ way to rank films is clearly a futile endeavour. Give it up, Mr Rotten Tomatoes!

But anyway, back to trying to win the lottery by watching Red Rock West.

Squint, and it’s David Lynch: Nic Cage, Lara Flynn Boyle and Dennis Hopper in a tale about the seedy underside of small-town America. Depending on your point of view this is either Lynch with a slicker, more coherent script, or Lynch with all the interesting bits filed off.

Cage is Mike, a drifter just trying to find some honest work (I can relate), who finds himself in the seemingly unremarkable town of Red Rock. He thinks he’s finally found a gig after he’s mistaken for someone else, only to find out that the ‘job’ is a hit-job, and the target is his new employer’s wife (Lara Flynn Boyle).

He warns her that she’s in danger and leaves town as fast as he can — only get into a car accident that forces him to return and face his ‘employer’, who turns out to also be the town’s sheriff. The real hitman (Dennis Hopper) turns up, Mike falls for the sheriff’s wife, and things continue to escalate, often at gunpoint. (With hilarious consequences?)

It’s a fun little film — not much to it beyond the twists and turns, but it ticks along fast enough to get away with it. Cage’s performance isn’t one of his more notable efforts, but he’s really nailed ‘increasing exasperation’ down as a baseline character trait at this point.

While compared to Deadfall this is a work of towering genius, I suspect its excellent reputation stems a lot from a lack of exposure as much as anything else. It’s a hard film to fault, but it’s also never truly exceptional — this is more tightly written than Lynch’s Wild At Heart, but it never really shows anything like the flair, anything that really sticks with you.

The distributor at the time lost faith in the film, and it would have gone straight to video if the enthusiastic owner of a small cinema in San Fransisco hadn’t chanced upon it at a Canadian film festival. I expect it turned up on BBC2 at 1 in the morning at some point.

THE NUMBERS

5 — Near the start of the film, Mike pulls into a service station, and spends his last 5 dollars on petrol. The guy working there suggests he try a town called Red Rock if he’s looking for work. HEY, THAT’S THE TOWN FROM THE NAME OF THE MOVIE!

10 — When Mike is first mistaken for Lyle, the hitman, Wayne, his would-be employer says he’ll get paid 10 grand to kill his wife: 5 now, 5 later.

12 — One of the numbers in the combination to Wayne’s safe is 12.

19 — Wayne and his wife Suzanne themselves turn out to be in hiding because they stole 1.9 million in a bank robbery.

24 — Mike reveals to Lyle that when he was a marine he was stationed with the 24th in the Lebanon.

50 — When Mike first hears of Red Rock, he’s told it’s 50 miles down the road.

THE RESULT

No numbers matched.

Soon I and my lovely wife will have to rob a bank, and then she will try to leave me and bone Nicolas Cage.

NEXT TIME ON NICOLAS CAGE:

Guarding Tess. Google describes it as a ‘thriller/comedy of manners’, which must be the least appealing genre of film I’ve ever heard of.