Delayed Reaction: Clay Pigeons

Premise: A man finds himself connected to a series of deaths and murders around the same time that a serial killer rolls into town.

 

So...this movie rules. I don't remember exactly how I became aware of it. I think it was a random recommendation from an early Filmspotting podcast. By the time I watched it, I forgot everything about it except that it had a really great 1998 cast - pre-Gladiator Joaquin Phoenix, post-Swingers Vince Vaughn, Romy and Michelle era Janeane Garofalo! It comes from this mini-era of late 90s Southwest dark comedies like Bottle Rocket and Out of Sight. I could even extend it out to include Very Bad Things, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and From Dusk Till Dawn. They are these sunbaked movies with big characters and comically extreme premises that are dumb but committed. In fact, it's funny how many of those were used as stepping stones to a higher level in the directors' careers. Stephen Soderbergh turned Out of Sight into Ocean's Eleven. Wes Anderson used Bottle Rocket to make movies increasingly in his specific style and vision. Peter Berg parlayed Very Bad Things into The Rundown and other increasingly muscular movies. And, it's not surprising that David Dobkin eventually turned this job into Wedding Crashers.

 

I love how quickly this movie sets the tone in the very first scene. And, it kept escalating whenever I thought I knew what kind of movie it was going to be. It even throws in Garofalo quite late to disrupt the equilibrium of the movie. It baffles me that I never caught this movie at 1AM on HBO when I was 13, thinking that it was weird and funny (and holding out hope that there'd be boobs in it, because that's how things worked then...and maybe now too). This is a perfect time for everyone in the cast. Joaquin was still willing to be goofy for a director who doesn't have Oscar nominations. Vince Vaughn was still young and lanky enough to be handsome and just a little threatening. It was the golden age of Garofalo as a castable actress*.

Seriously. She was in 17 movies from 1997-1999 alone.

 

I don't want to build this movie up too much. It's messy and it's more generally funny than a constant knee slapper. It's better to discover it than to build it up with expectations. It seems fitting that the transfer picture quality of the movie to Amazon Prime is so shitty. Or maybe the movie itself was in low quality when it was released. Regardless, my experience watching it reminded me of watching a DVD from 1999 that looked like they recorded it from a VHS copy. Try not to hold it against the movie though.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend