JamesHitchcock's Review of Eine Nacht bei McCool's
JamesHitchcock
Check out JamesHitchcock's 5/10 review of "One Night at McCool's"
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"One Night at McCool's" is, like "Rashomon", an example of a film which borrows that common literary device, multiple narrator technique. The three narrators in this film are the three men in the life of the central female character, a sultry femme fatale named Jewel. All three narrators have a confessor-figure to whom they can unburden themselves. The first, a rather dim barman named Randy, tells his story to a casual acquaintance named Burmeister, who just happens to be a hit man. The film's title is taken from the bar where Randy works. (I wonder of the scriptwriter was aware of the British slang meaning of the word "randy" when naming the character). The second narrator is Carl, a married lawyer who unburdens himself to his female psychiatrist, and the third is a guilt-ridden, widowed Catholic cop named Detective Dehling, who has a confessor in the literal sense in the shape of his priest.

The film is essentially a black comedy. Jewel comes into Randy's life when he rescues her from what appears to be an attempted rape by her abusive boyfriend Utah. After she shoots Utah dead, she becomes his girlfriend, but he faces competition for her in the shape of Carl (who also happens to be his cousin) and Officer Dehling, the policeman investigating the crime. Jewel (an appropriate name in view of her materialistic nature) is a low-rent material girl; some women in her position would demand diamonds or furs, but Jewel would sell her soul for a second-hand DVD player. Perhaps DVD players were not quite as ten-a-penny six years ago as they are today, but even so this indicates that Jewel prices herself rather more cheaply than would most femmes fatales blessed with the looks of Liv Tyler. Most of the plot derives from Jewel's attempts to play her three lovers off against one another in her search for material goods.

The best acting performances come from John Goodman and, surprisingly, from Michael Douglas as Burmeister. I say "surprisingly" because Douglas (here wearing a slicked-back hairstyle which put me in mind of his father Kirk ) is not normally an actor one would associate with comedy, but he was clearly trying to extend his range, and to some extend succeeding. Goodman's Dehling seems to be the embodiment of that old Protestant stereotype that every Catholic is tormented by sexual guilt; he manages to reconcile his lust for Jewel with his religious convictions by convincing himself that God has sent her to him as a substitute for his dead wife.

Liv Tyler, however, never quite convinces. Although she is very attractive, there was always an air of sweetness and innocence about her, which meant that she was never able to put across the mixture of carnality and venality which characterises Jewel. My main problem with the film, however, was that I was never able to sympathise with any of the characters, either on an emotional or an intellectual level. All three principal male characters were not only stupid but also unsympathetic- Randy is stupid and gullible, Carl stupid and lecherous and Dehling stupid and hypocritical- which meant that I never really cared what happened to any of them. Black comedy can be a difficult genre to get right; such a film needs to be sparklingly witty throughout in order to overcome any objections to its lapses in taste, and sparkling wit is not something much in evidence here. "One Night at McCool's" is occasionally amusing, but in a film like this "occasionally" is not enough. 5/10

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