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List Price: $29.95 | | Label: Polygram Video
Salesrank: 57875
Released: November 18, 1997 |
| Our Price: $30.74 |
| Used Price: $5.55 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
David Duchovny is a blocked author with a fascination for outlaw killers who hatches a plan to road trip through America's mass-murder landmarks to finish his book. He enlists his frustrated photographer girlfriend Michelle Forbes, who desperately wants to leave the East Coast for L.A., to illustrate the tome, and they advertise for riding partners. Luckily for them, they wind up with a veteran killer, the greasy trailer-park ex-con Brad Pitt, who decides to skip parole with his cowering child-woman girlfriend Juliette Lewis. Duchovny is enamored by gun-toting Pitt's recklessness and lawless disregard for, well, everything; he's simultaneously terrified and thrilled by Pitt's brutal beating of a barfly. Meanwhile, Pitt's leaving a trail of corpses in their wake.
Directed with a cool remove by Dominic Sena (Gone in 60 Seconds 2000), Kalifornia falls somewhere between Badlands and Natural Born Killers. Pitt brings a ferocious magnetism to his part, but it's still hard to buy genial Duchovny's odd attraction; Juliette Lewis conveys a terrifying sense of victimization with her poor dumb creature. Despite the film's best efforts, it never really plumbs the psyche of Pitt's simmering psycho--he's just plain bad, you know--but it does fashion an effective little thriller out of the tensions brewing in the restless quartet. --Sean Axmaker
Kalifornia Reviews:
A Good Ride 
2009-12-14 - One night I found my two cats and a neighbor's third lying in a rough circle on the driveway, corralling a mole. Each cat seemed lost in his own thoughts, but whenever the mole attempted to capitalize on that distraction and escape the fence of bodies, the nearest feline would take a paw and sweep the rodent back to the center. The mole quivered, wishing, I'm sure, for its protective blanket of earth.
The next morning no carcass adorned the concrete. Had the well-fed felines shown mercy and allowed the mole to return to the safety of its burrow? Had they killed and eaten it? I'll never know--and I didn't think again about the incident until I saw "Kalifornia," a movie in which a pair of mole-humans embark on a cross-country car trip with a cat-man.
Brian Kessler (David Duchovny) and Carrie Laughlin (Michelle Forbes) live in Pittsburgh, where big-city sprawl creates maze-like paths. Both characters nest in the protection of social obligation; we learn, for example, that good-citizen Brian used a book advance in part to pay the rent. Their work requires that they tunnel into the human psyche: writer Brian explores the impulse to murder while photographer Carrie digs into issues of race and sex. They both compartmentalize these interests: Brian keeps his serial killer notes on labeled cassettes organized in plastic cases; Carrie boxes the provocative subjects of her photos not only with the framing of the camera lens but also by closing her portfolio. The two even look like moles, garbed in black, their sensitive eyes shielded with dark glasses, as they begin a tour of famous murder sites. Accustomed to defined physical and mental spaces, they are ill-prepared for the open-to-anything attitude of their ride-share companion Early Grayce (Brad Pitt), who recognizes no limits of morality, conscience, or law.
The dangerous road trip has thrilled audiences since Odysseus made his way home from Troy. A successful update needs to keep us terrified for the well-being of likable characters. To provoke our terror is Early. Unlike his traveling companions, the audience has witnessed his violence. We've seen a random killing of two people so that Early can procure a birthday present for his girlfriend Adele (Juliette Lewis)--an opportunistic grab of red high heels, the tapping of which will get neither the original nor new wearer safely home. We also know Early has murdered his landlord because, unlike Brian, when the rent is due, he doesn't meet his social obligation with a check.
Brian, the other male in the car, contributes to our misgivings. We can't look to him for leadership as he quickly develops a bro crush on Early after a night out at a redneck bar and the opportunity to shoot a pistol.
Sweet Adele provides excellent counterpoint as she sees only the good in our bad boy. And he has his moments of charm, such as when he buys Adele a cheap, pink camera so that she too can document the trip. Whether her naiveté is the result of low IQ or a defense mechanism to deal with a childhood gang rape, she spills a little sunshine into the darkening picture. We want Early to live up to the hero status she ascribes him--but we sat down to watch a thriller and suspect that he won't.
Carrie is too edgy, too dismissive, to be immediately likable. Her style, her photos, her tongue are all sharp, but her disappointment over a gallery rejection and her fondness for Brian, and later Adele, are softening. We have hope that she can save herself and the others as she alone senses danger. Unlike Brian and Adele, both busy in their own heads, Carrie has engaged the openness where Early thrives. She admits to Adele, for example, that she is both photographer and participant in her pictures--pictures that would inspire a Republican congressman to slash funding for the arts. When Carrie speculates that Early may have served time for murder, Brian explains that a parolee would not be allowed to leave the state. Brian cannot conceive of his traveling companion stepping outside of social restrictions. The more experienced Carrie, however, can, for she snaps back, "Maybe he wasn't allowed to leave the state. Did you ever stop to think about that?"
The four car occupants are perfectly cast and costumed. The whiskered, grimy Pitt has Early emerge through his skin, not his clothes, like a predator that has just rolled in antelope dung before approaching the herd. Duchovny makes Brian's adoration of Early believable because a trace of exploitable teenager lingers on his face. His ridiculous earrings and immature purchase of a convertible Continental indicate that, despite the intellectual acrobatics, Brian needs props to bolster his young man's insecurity. Lewis keeps Adele consistently childish so that even sex with Early resembles a gleeful four-year-old bouncing on a rocking horse. Athletic and imposing, Forbes can be unconvincing when Carrie needs to sound powerless, but we are glued to her steely eyes and cheer her aggression when, as the violence escalates, Carrie discovers claws of her own. More importantly, Carrie wears ass-kicking boots, not girly shoes, so we trust that she won't trip at an important moment.
We want the four of them to reach California, everyone alive and well, but then Carrie and Early catch the news bulletin of the man-hunt for Early, and 40 minutes of white-knuckle suspense ensues. Our own adrenalin pumping, we wonder if Early will deliver the death blow or if our mole-humans, traveling under the open sky, disconnected from their burrow-city, will evolve into creatures who discover in time the animal instincts they need to survive. It's a good ride.
One False Move 
2009-12-07 - The acting is first rate, the writing is good, the overall movie works...but there is one false move.
I don't think anyone doubts that Brad Pitt can act. Yes, he's one of the hottest studs in Hollywood, a pretty boy with six-pack abs who jumps from motorcycles to Angelina Jolie for the paparazzi cameras. But he can act, especially against type. He was an awesome stoner in TRUE ROMANCE. He was the best thing in TWELVE MONKEYS. And that was really him in a monkey suit tearing up parking lots and streets on MTV's "Jackass" show.
And he delivers here as a drunken redneck serial killer in KALIFORNIA. Juliette Lewis is also good, again playing a mentally-challenged young girl so well that audiences will, after CAPE FEAR and THE OTHER SISTER, believe there's something "not quite right" about that actress. David Duchovny seems so oblivious to the danger of this couple that Michelle Forbes is actually the character to carry the movie--and I think she does.
And this is also where the movie made a mistake, I believe. Because there is a scene where Brad's character does something he NEVER does anywhere else in the movie: he leave someone alive. And you KNOW there is no way he would ever do that. He is a killing machine. To leave David handcuffed to a piano completely knocked me out of the movie. And Michelle's character could've carried the rest of the movie.
But I never believed for a second that Brad's psycho killer would ever hesitate to pull the trigger. On anybody, even the male lead. Think about it.
Perfect! 
2009-09-04 - Came on time and packaged well. Loved watching the DVD with my boyfriend who had been wanting this movie for awhile!
Effective little road movie thriller
2009-07-20 - I am working hard, lately, at reducing the stack of DVDs that has accumulated at home while I didn't pay attention. I have a faible for road movies and I rather like Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis, so here we go.
An aspiring writer tries to see a deserving project in a road trip to different murder sites along the road from East to West Coast. What an idiot!
His frustrated, attractive, and strong willed photographer girlfriend likes the idea of moving to California.
To save gas cost, they advertise for paying travel companions. They end up with the worst of all possible solutions: a violent killer on the run from parole, with his mentally retarded girl friend. (his parole probably is not from a murder conviction, so don't get yourselves worked up here!)
Weakness: Pitt's bad guy is just plain bad, there is no further contour in him. Easy job, Brad. The writer's (Duchovny) fascination with him, even after he really ought to have seen through him, as his girlfriend has, is irritating, but more plausible, if we see it as a mixture of cowardice and curiosity. After all, he wants to write about murderers, so here he can study one...
Lewis is so convincing in her retardation, that one believes she is not acting, which for sure means, she is fantastic. Or retarded?
Chilling, Vicious & Off-The-Charts Good!!--Brad Pitt Is A Savage & Perversely Sexy Beast In This Early Role!!
2009-07-19 - I had this movie on VHS back in the early 90's, and it was
one of ones that I just had to buy again once I replaced all
my old VHS's with DVD's by 2004 and 2005.
Brad Pitt's chilling potrayal of the vicious,
just-this-side-of-an-animal, serial/thrill killer "Early Grace"
is unsung as one of his best roles!
As beautiful as Brad is to look at, coupled with his natural
charisma, it's just amazing how he pulled this character up
from some deep dark place in his psyche that he should
never touch on again!
It seems that he drew on his Missouri/Oklahoma roots
for Early's raspy southern drawl and that stomach-churning
habit he has of inhaling and eating his own snot or
spitting it out every 5 seconds. (Yuck!)
He seems as if he'd just learn to walk upright a few days before...
he's brutal, raw, full of animal cunning, is completely devoid
of any sense of humanity and conscience about what he does
from one minute to the next, he grunts and growls, and
sees a woman as only as vessel for his lust and to be
an obiedient mindless slave! (Or Else, BANG!!--Next!)
Enter, Juliette Lewis, who she and Pitt were actually
an item back then...Nobody can play a clueless, child-like
idiot girl-woman like she can! (See her in Scorsese's remake
of "Cape Fear"!!) She completely delivers her role against
Pitt's characters redneck neanderthal to a tee!
Add to this, David Duchovny's detach cool and charm,
and his characters kind of privileged, laid-back, idealistic
vibe as a writer who is obsessed with serial killers,
who wants to travel cross-country to the locations of some
of the most gruesome murders in recent history with his
photgrapher girlfriend, played with icy aloof arrogance
by Kathy Larson, who isn't keen on the idea of picking up
these scruffy strangers to share costs for their "adventure".
Oh, and what an adventure it turns out to be!--
WOW!!--I love this film! (-:
Even though Brad Pitt was just 2 yrs in from his breakthrough
role as the roadside hottie in "Thelma & Louise",
and everybody was touting him as the young beefcake version of
Redford or Newman, he was keen to show the world that he was
indeed an actor of great depth & versatility and not just
another pretty face!---Well, he defintely shows his stuff
in this early work! Dominic Sena's direction works with
eerie dark precision here, and he and Pitt forge what would
turn out to be a career-long bond here!
As savage, warped and wicked as Early Grace is,
with Brad Pitt playing him, he is still perversely sexy
as hell at the same time! (-:
Brad drops trow a couple of times in this and shows
off his dirty & sweaty but chiseled physique!
Duchovny shows off his sexy too in a steamy hotel love
scene with his girlfriend.
This film is still intriguing and can hold your attention
after almost 16 yrs!--WOW!!--Has it been that long?
This film is a keeper for your collection!--Buy It!
