The Polish brothers complete their informal trilogy of films set in America's strangely surreal heartland with Northfork, an uneven, not quite realized, yet visually pleasing mélange of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Terry Gilliam and, to a much larger extent, another pair of more successful period-filmmaking brothers – the Coens.  There's an interesting quote in the film, and it's echoed in the studio's press notes, as well: "We're either halfway to heaven or halfway to hell."  The same thing could be said of Northfork's disappointing inability to escape its own purgatory.

Following the slightly overpraised Twin Falls Idaho and the largely forgotten Jackpot, the Polish brothers' latest opens in 1955 Montana, where, in two days, a recently constructed dam will turn the small, dusty town of Northfork into one big lake, driving up both property values and interest in the barren, godforsaken area.  The impending destruction starts the picture's two narrative threads into motion.

In one, the six-man State Evacuation Committee is desperately trying to convince the few remaining residents to pack up and get out before they find themselves underwater.  They're not acting out of the goodness of their heart, however.  Each black-suited, fedora-sporting, two-man team who successfully liberates at least 65 evacuees has been promised 1.5 acres of prime waterfront property apiece.  One of these is a father-son team (James Woods and screenwriter Mark Polish) who are too busy trying to reach their magic number to decide whether or not to exhume their wife and mother before the flood comes. 

The other story involves a young, sickly boy named Irwin (Duel Farnes – ain’t that a great name?) who is being returned to the orphanage by his parents (Claire Forlani and Clark Gregg) for fear he won't survive their move out of the area.  Irwin is left in the care of Father Harlan (narrator Nick Nolte), marking only the beginning of Northfolk's nonstop religious references (both subtle and obvious - the film is about a town damned because of a dam).  As Irwin slips closer and closer to death, he begins to imagine himself in some kind of limbo where he interacts with four odd seraph-type creatures (Daryl Hannah, Robin Sachs, Anthony Edwards and Ben Foster) who think he might be "the lost angel."

The highlight here is the visuals, especially M. David Mullen's practically monochromatic cinematography (he also shot Twin Falls, Jackpot, and not much I've heard of before, between or after).  The sporadic humor is as dry as the arid town, but the acting is generally solid all around.  Even though the Polish brothers dipped into the same acting pool over the course of this trilogy (Hannah and Edwards were in Jackpot; Jon Gries and Michele Hicks were in Twin Falls; and, on an unrelated note, the brothers themselves appeared with Nolte in The Good Thief), it's good to see they're no longer plagiarizing the Tarantino handbook of career resurrection (read: Garrett Morris, William Katt and Lesley Ann Warren, who were all in Twin Falls).

Still, I couldn't help but feel shortchanged by Northfork.  There's a good film in there somewhere, but dam(n)ed if I could find it.

1:34 -

for brief sexuality