Jennifer Eight (1992)

It's Bruce Robinson time again on My 2011 in Movies. This was the last film before this year's (hope hope hope) The Rum Diaries, that Robinson directed in 1992. There doesn't seem to be a common thread in Robinson subjects of writing; Withnail was comedy autobio, How To Get Ahead...  was satire:he wrote screenplays for The Killing Fields and In Dreams too and this, Jennifer Eight is a standard serial killer mystery. Andy Garcia is a forensic cop who has relocated to a small town after his wife... I'm not sure if she died or just left-anyway doing the main thing you shouldn't do in any new job that anyone starts- he starts throwing his weight around and reopened an unsolved murder case, when someone finds a human hand at the dump ('... Dude, i could get you a hand by 3pm this afternoon...'). He also is so astute, he can tell this was a blind person's hand because of erosion to the digits from Braille (to be fair, I'm running through the story quickly and that seemed less of a stretch in the film) and through the basis of unsolved disappearances at the blind college, he goes to there and meets a young blind Uma Thurman, who for the sake of time and salient knowledge, is likely to be the next victim and looks exactly like Garcia's ex-wife.
I'm a massive fan of Withnail And I; this is a read but I've never been in a situation in pop culture where you like someone's one piece of work and everything else doesn't resonate at all. If anything this is like the anti-Withnail - it is stock, story-led, overlong and American. It's a serial killer plot from any number of tv detective shows in any number of countries and though the 'blindness' angle is fresh, there's nothing special done with it really; it's an average mystery yarn with red-herrings and disinformation.  But half-way through, i started thinking about interesting plot that might happen (that doesn't by the way)... what if blind Uma was the murderer? You never see any blinding killers do you? (No pun intended) Could be for any number of reasons- she was jealous of the other girls boyfriends, domination over bullies, thrill of the hunt... take your pick. Now that might sound exploitative but obviously this film makes a nod to Vertigo- Hitch never had a problem with landing that kind of story in a broadly pallitible way. One man's opinion.
Andy Garcia's fine in this, i guess... goes a bot overboard with the desk-smacking. I mean who doesn't enjoy a spot of desk-smacking but in moderation, guy. Sheesh. John Malkovich pops up for an extended cameo. No reason for him to be in this but he neither adds or subtracts to the proceedings. Oh yeah, Lance Henriksen is in it too as a friendly old cop buddy type, Garcia's pal- now I'm sure Lance is a pro,  a lovely generous man but no one wants to see him being understandable or nice. The thought of him being affection to a woman creeps me out like an uncle kissing you. It's weird.
So I do look forward to The Rum Diaries but only because of the prime BOOOOOZE element...

I watched Jennifer Eight (1992) on DVD via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Limitless (2011)...