Director Eddie Israel(played by Harvey Keitel) is obsessed with making a movie about spiritual redemption.To be edgy it take place with a central woman who's tired of sex,drugs, and violence.This mirrors his and the stars life,fitting for the title of that film to be Mother of Mirrors.His two main stars(played by Madonna and James Russo)are playing there roles too good, and soon there fights from the screen come into the real world.Eddie isn't too hot either,as hes life is starting to fall apart too,as his years of cheating on his wife are coming back at him.
Before i go into detail on the movie,heres how i came into be to get the film. At a local Kmart near my house,this DVD has been sitting on the shelf there for the past 4 years. When i did go to Kmart, something always catches my eye away from it. Over that time i started discovering Abel Ferrara and his beautiful dark and twisted films. After King of New york(1990),I was hooked. So after checking and finding out this was a Ferrara movie, I had to get it. Finally last week i picked it up and watched it.
The movie is kinda like Fellini's 81/2(1963) on crack in many spots,and it justs around from the plot to the movie within the movie. The acing is great in that respect, because they jump nicely from acting and acting like acting(if that makes any seance). Harvey Keitel is the stand out here,at times it seems like him at his bleakest from Bad Lieutenant(1992),but other then that he seems kinda numb which adds to the state of mind of the director. Years of being unfaithful and lieing to himself have finally came up to catch him with his guard down.
Other then Keitel, the other 3 main characters are also given great performances. James Russo is just a mad man, with the other big letdown being that he seems to be the same thurout the whole movie. Nancy Ferrara(the wife of Abel Ferrara in real life) is surpisly great as Eddie's caring wife. The scene where she loses it when Eddie tells how many affairs his had is just amazing and raw. That leaves me with the biggest shocker, Madonna is actually great in a second billing role! Madonna really sales her role as a two faced bitch, yet at the same time is the only one who knows how stupid and self absorbed Hollywood is, she knows how to live the L.A. life. To bad Madonna hated the movie and insulted it when it came out.
The tone of the movie, Like i said earlier is a kind of numbness that shoots out violence at us. The abuse thats happening in the movie within the movie, is brutal and real. Drug use is also detailed and handled as just a normal thing for actors to do when bored or to get there edge. As a whole it's just shot as real life with a mix of strange under pining. Also to the way the movie is told, it jumps from rough shot on low grade video for the interviews within the film to jumping editing for the tkes within the movie.
Also it's never clear when the take is going or if real life is going on. My faorite scene that shows that is when Keitel's Eddie is screaming at Madonna to help her with keeping her lines in order, it soon gets out of control and soon hes just ripping her a new one, and they fouces less on the scene and more on Eddie vocaly raping Madonna's character.
One Intersting thing I found in the movie that has nothing reaily to this movie, is how in a strange way, connects both the Bad Lieutenant films. After the Nick Cage version came out, Abel hated it and how it was made by Werner Herzog, yet in this movie made years before that verson had connections to it. The star of the old one is Harvey Keitel and its Ferrara. To add to this theres two scenes in this movie that ferance the new Nick Cage one.
1. After a scene where Harvey Keitel and Madonna have sex,theres a shot looking outside, at a billboard for The Nick Cage movie Amos and Andrew(1993).
2. When Keitels Eddie is about to kill himself,hes watching a scene from the documentary Burden of Dreams, showing Director Werner Herzog on the set of Fitzcarraldo(1982).
Dangerous Game was a strange surpise of a movie, it's a hard dark look at Hollywood. Tho it isn't the best film about it, it is the best one with Madonna.
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