Nominee for Palme d'Or at
Cannes Film Festival 2005
Review:
Sam Shepard co-writes and stars in Dont Come Knocking, where an
aging Western star in a moment of alcohol-fueled realisation
deserts the production of his latest film to search down his past
in order find a new future. Howard Spence is the quintessential
lone ranger, no place to call home and a drugstore cowboy at heart,
dependent on booze and women to get him through his days. Blessed
with a bevy of talented performers and a seasoned
director/co-writer in Wim Wenders, the film doesnt quite live up
to the expectations set with Shepard and Wenders last
collaboration, Paris, Texas.
Its very much the same sort of endeavour, but theyve lost their
edge and the understanding of the painful realisations of lost
glory and rediscovered pasts, which they had carefully constructed
back then. While the truth of their storytelling might be wavering
by contemporary standards, the message does not change in their
latest effort. Unfortunately, an over-wrought and glaringly
miscalculated script hinders the potential that this film
had.
Crafted with an awkward surrealism in the setting and its
characters, Wenders puts together a effusively insincere and dreary
account of an unsympathetic and constantly inebriated lothario
whos motivation is never quite clear to anyone, especially to
himself. Bogged down with a screenplay reeking of self-awareness
and a discomfited atmosphere of pretension, its a stale study of
male menopausal midlife crisis punctuated with obligatory regrets
and the exaggerated interpretations of its remnants.....
Continued at
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