"After Hours" In the Desert; Oliver Stone Mixes Scorsese and Tarantino with His Own Gimmick

"U Turn," rather famously, was done as some sort of small scale, sexed up violent noir "little movie" by Oliver Stone after the epic heaviness and Deep Think of JFK, Natural Born Killers, and Nixon.

The film invoked a "directorial-editing-cinematography style" from Stone that he had already used on a few movies. I honestly can't remember which one was FIRST. Its in JFK. Its DEFINITELY in Natural Born Killers(which this film resembles in its rough violence and desert landscapes.) And its in Nixon.

It seemed cool in the beginning, but as with all gimmicks it wore out its welcome.

A person talks in medium shot. SUDDENLY we cut to an extreme close-up of their mouth, or their eyes, or an ear and then SUDDENLY we cut to some other image -- often horrific(a buzzard eating the guts of road kill, a murder victim, a close-up on violence.) The sound and music are a nerve-jangling cacophony. I recall Stone keeping up this technique at least through his football epic "On Any Sunday" and rather ruining that movie. I can't remember when Stone gave the editing/sound gimmick up, but it couldn't have come too soon for me.

Though this was an editing gambit, Stone also pumped up, during this period -- the use of the truly great cinematopgrahy of Robert Richardson, one of the few "star DPS" out there -- for Stone, particularly in JFK, Richardson would intercut color footage and black and white footage(sometimes of the same scene), bleached out film, etc.

Eventually, Robert Richardson went on to give Quentin Tarantino some great images(particularly in The Hateful Eight) but with none of Stone's "gimmickry." One sensed that style (editing more than photography) was reserved FOR Stone. Down the road while shooting "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" for QT, Richardson said "Quentin Tarantino is the greatest director for whom I have ever worked." I'll bet word got back to Oliver Stone on THAT (and remember: it was Stone who directed a version of QT's Natural Born Killers script that QT has disowned.)

So here is Oliver Stone, taking a vacation from his "serious" themes(and his post-Platoon Vietnam pictures like Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven and Earth) to make this violent sexual noir and...its a few years after QT hit big with Pulp Fiction, so it feels SOMEWHAT like a QT movie but MORESO like a particular Martin Scorsese movie from the 80s:

After Hours. That's the one where Griffin Dunne is trapped from dusk til dawn in the deeper reaches of New York City and exposed to any number of nutty people -- including dangerously seductive women -- and keeps getting returned to the places and people he's trying to escape. No exit. No way out.

Its the same FEELING here. Except Sean Penn is a tougher guy -- a gambler already missing two fingers on inability to pay debts, but well ready to fight for his place in the world and its survival.

Oliver Stone was a big name with serious intent, to he was able to attract a pretty good cast for U-Turn, several of whom were right near the beginning of their movie careers. You can find Jennifer Lopez(in an early, sexual, sometimes unclad role), Billy Bob Thornton(right after Swing Blade but so disgustingly made up as a greaseface Mechanic with bad teeth that his soon-to-arrive sexual swagger is nowhere to be found), Joaquin Phoenix as a menacing young punk and Claire Danes as his dimwitted girlfriend(she keeps coming on to Penn and Joaquin keeps picking fights with him).

Not so beginning: Nick Nolte (the boyishly handsome hunk of North Dallas Forty gone to seed, but still trim and handsome "inside the rot")

And: Powers Boothe -- Nolte's estimable adversary in Walter Hill's "Extreme Prejudice" of 1987 and they're back in the Southwest again.

Great cast. Some violence. Some sex. Some perversion. No exit.

Oliver Stone on vacation.