Powder Blue movie review 2009
Powder Blue starts with Jack Doheny (Ray Liotta) standing on the beach at dawn, he swims into the gray, dark ocean and you get the sense this going to be an intense film. This dialog driven story was talked about in the press for the fact that Jessica Biel plays a stripper, but that is a sideshow to the deep and moving plot. This ensemble cast plays a set of seemingly random people that have their lives collide on Christmas in Los Angeles. Eddie Redmayne portrays a mortician who falls in love with her with Rose-Johnny (Jessica Biel) after finding her lost dog that he runs over with his hearse.

Kris Kristofferson plays the head of a corporate crime organization and Patrick Swayze plays the sleazy owner of the club where Rose-Johnny dances. He also meet a man named Charlie (Forest Whitaker) who is willing to pay $50,000 for someone to shoot him as he can’t kill himself on his own.

Well Jessica Biel is taking a chance with this role and I think it it payed off big time, her character is deep and venerable and yet strong and driven with purpose. She manages to portray these emotions an example is a scene where she is taking to a doctor in the hospital where her son is in a coma as she offers herself to him as a last resort save him “I’ll do anything” really well acted. There is a reason that a bunch of well known actors signed on to this project, it’s a deep story with rich dialog and a story that really has something to say about the human condition.

Writer/Directed by Timothy Linh Bui does the job well with interesting scenes of los angles that you just done see in allot of films and the wide scope of the 2.3 to 1 anamorphic framing intensifies this. Deep, dark and yet still uplifting, this film does deliver a message of hope even in the face of a seemingly hopeless lost world. Not exactly a light lighthearted drama that makes it to your neighborhood theaters, this film was a bit to heavy I would suppose for mainstream America, and rightly so. Three out of four stars.

Directed by Timothy Linh Bui
Produced by Timothy Linh Bui, Forest Whitaker, Ross M. Dinerstein, Bobby Schwartz, Tracee Stanley-Newell
Written by Timothy Linh Bui
Starring Jessica Biel, Forest Whitaker, Patrick Swayze, Ray Liotta, Eddie Redmayne, Alejandro Romero
Distributed by Speakeasy Releasing
Movies Reviews | Films | DVD | Blu-ray |Film critic Matt Willey