Bob Rafelson’s Blood & Wine is a seriously underrated film. Released 20 years ago, it feels like a downbeat effort that should have been made in 1976, not 1996, and with this cast, it’s hard for me to understand how this film came and went with nary a trace when it was buried with a late February opening. This is a hot blooded neo-noir with ripe dialogue and a starry ensemble, and I just can’t fathom how it only grossed $1.1 million in the theaters. Jack Nicholson was perfectly cast as a desperate wine salesman who concocts a jewelry robbery that then goes way off the mark after the initial job. Stephen Dorff, Michael Caine, Judy Davis, Harold Perrineau, and a very sultry Jennifer Lopez were all terrific in supporting roles, but my guess is that the material was too unlikable to be widely embraced. Critcs were mostly kind but nobody really went crazy for it, which seems a shame, because it’s damn good.
This is a dark movie about flawed people, and while it featured megastar Nicholson in the lead role, he’s nothing like a traditional hero or easy to identify with. There’s a moral ambiguity that strengthens the entire film, with the pungent and twisty script by Alison Cross and Nick Villiers never allowing for easy answers to the complicated situations posed by the increasingly sinister plot. The Florida atmosphere lent an interesting visual texture, with cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel bathing the film in a gauzy visual sheen that recalled films from two decades previous, while legendary production designer Richard Sylbert made terrific use of the hot and seedy Floridian locations. This was the seventh collaboration between Rafelson and Nicholson, and even if the film is more conventional in its overall schematics than some of their previous team-ups, there’s still a distinct level of old-fashioned confidence in all of the genre tropes that this type of film can exploit. Nicholson has some terrific moments during the big car-crash sequence, and the film ends on a moment of sad realization for all involved.
Podcasting Them Softly 