It took a single preview to hook me right into Spun, MTV-bred director Jonas Akerlund’s fisheye view of life amongst methamphetamine addicts. While I am proudly jaded concerning the effect previews have on me. I am nearly always capable of convincing myself that I can walk away whenever I want.
That went out the window when I saw Mickey Rourke, a leathery, weathered version but still obviously the same psychotic, sly baboon from “”Angel Heart,”” “”The Pope of Greenwich Village”” and, oh yeah, “”9 1/2 Weeks,”” decked out like a chef on the set of a Food Network cooking show gleefully giving a step-by-step on how to cook up a hearty batch of crystal meth. As high concept marketing goes, this was the indie equivalent of the Independence Day trailer series wherein the spectral shadow of the invading UFOs crept over various national landmarks. Indeed, the power of Spun’s addictive teaser (which, as a rock in the pyramid of disappointment raised over the film’s course of two hours, never appears in the film itself) was likewise derived from this somehow iconic image that lingered in the brain, as opposed to any narrative tidbits ladled out for consumption. Sadly, after about an hour into the film itself, I came to the crashing realization that there wasn’t much of a narrative to sell. As a friend pointed out, you could go more than twelve deep into Spun’s cast list and still see names that caught your interest. “”Oh, Debbie Harry’s still acting? Cool. Eric Roberts on board? Fair enough. Ron Jeremy plays a bartender? Sign me on. Larry Drake as a veterinarian? Paging Dr. Giggles. Tony Kaye as a strip club DJ? It’s the part he was born to play! There’s even the presence of an Arquette (it’s Alexis, who is still waiting patiently in line for his 15 minutes) and a smashed pumpkin (Billy Corgan, whose music gives the film its sense of acoustic pathos). Mena Suvari is on hand, apparently determined to deglamorize herself in the same spirit as Cameron Diaz in “”Being John Malkovitch,”” but overshoots it by an unhealthy margin; when coupled with her wordless constipated struggle on the toilet, her mouthful of Elizabethan-era teeth make for a lethal overdose of heavy-handed characterization. The frontmen in this ensemble are likewise possessed of the requisite elements of hipness and tragedy to continue to formula. Brittany Murphy, John Leguizamo, Jason Schwartzman and Patrick Fugit all swing in great, staggering orbits about Rourke’s sun. And herein lieth the problem. As written, there’s not much of a center to this mess. What’s more, it is painfully clear that the screenwriters wanted to give their tale the elements of a traditional narrative but simply could not deliver. We are presented with arguments that Schwartzman’s character Ross is struggling to claw out of the downward spiral that his life’s become and that, in spite of utterly inexplicable acts of extreme misogyny and sadism on his part, we should be rooting for him to do so. What Ackerlund fails to address is Schwartzman’s innate quality of spoiled egocentricity–a quality that Wes Anderson actively exploited in “”Rushmore”” several years ago. This quality fights his character’s call for sympathy at every turn. We are much more inclined to feel for Patrick Fugit’s Frisbee, a willowy wreck of a goth loser with a wonderfully volcanic complexion and a mammoth, insatiable juggernaut of a trailer-dwelling meth-addicted mother. The sub-plot involving his acquisition by the police and subsequent role as the worst informant ever in the history of narcotics is engagingly hilarious; it is easy to see why Ackerlund chose to steer the focus away from this very traditional plot thread, but he offers up little in its place. To pass the time we get many scenes with Rourke–too many. He is the Hannibal Lector of the film, and as such the power of his presence hinges on it being administered in sparing doses. But, utilizing the theory than any good idea should be seized and throttled into the red zone, we are soon OD’d on Rourke’s character. Referred to only as The Cook, he is given a nice buildup before we are allowed to fully see him.