Directed with a cool remove by Dominic Sena, Kalifornia falls somewhere between Badlands and Natural Born Killers. David Duchovny is a blocked author with a fascination for outlaw killers who hatches a plan to road trip through America's mass-murder landmarks to finish his book. He enlists the help of his frustrated photographer girlfriend Michelle Forbes, who desperately wants to leave the East Coast for LA, and they advertise for riding partners. Luckily for them, they wind up with a veteran killer, the greasy trailer-park ex-con Brad Pitt, who decides to skip parole... with his cowering child-woman girlfriend Juliette Lewis. Duchovny is enamoured by gun-toting Pitt's recklessness and lawless disregard for, well, everything--simultaneously terrified and thrilled by Pitt's brutal beating of a barfly. Meanwhile, Pitt's leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. Pitt brings a ferocious magnetism to his part, but it's still hard to buy genial Duchovny's odd attraction; Juliette Lewis conveys a terrifying sense of victimization with her poor dumb creature. Despite the film's best efforts, it never really plumbs the psyche of Pitt's simmering psycho--he's just plain bad, you know--but it does fashion an effective little thriller out of the tensions brewing in the restless quartet. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com [show more]
A heavy, but engrossing film about a journalist writing a book about serial killers, who decides to visit infamous murder sites in order to better understand the nature and roots of violence.
David Duchovny is on form as the obsessed author whilst the highly underrated Michelle Forbes plays his photographer girlfriend, Brad Pitt (excellent, as the uncouth redneck serial killer) and Juliette Lewis (doing the white trash routine again) join them to spilt the costs on a surreal road trip that soon turns bad, when Brad decides to give yuppie couple David & Michelle an extreme intro into the grim world they"re researching.
"Kalifornia" went unnoticed back in 93, and was overshadowed by the infantile, tripped out absurdity of "Natural Born Killers"; this movie is far superior to "NBK" in almost every way imaginable. An above average, slow burn thriller which isn"t afraid to take risks or challenge our perceptions from time to time, and though I could never quite believe that an upper middle class couple didn"t have the gas money needed to go on a road trip, this is still an excellent film and definitely worth seeing. Brad Pitt proves himself as a serious actor, Michelle Forbes is simply stunning in her icy aloofness whilst director Dominic Sena is the one who surprised me the most, after making his debut with this dark, complex thriller, chose to go back to directing music videos only to return with glossy action flicks" Gone in 60 Seconds" and "Swordfish".
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