Feeling Minnesota *** (1996, Keanu Reeves, Vincent D’Onofrio, Cameron Diaz) – Classic Movie Review 1606

Feeling queasy, more like! Writer/director Steven Baigelman’s 1996 new-wave thriller is creditably ambitious and complex, if flawed and muddled – and no crowd-pleaser. Keanu Reeves and Vincent D’Onofrio star as grungy sibling rivals who start a war to the death after ex-con Reeves has sex with his brother’s bride Cameron Diaz on their wedding day. Well, it’s bad form, isn’t it?

The set-up is fine. An ex-con drifter (Reeves) turns up at the wedding of his lowlife brother Sam (D’Onofrio), an embezzling accountant at a strip joint who is getting married to the tough, blonde town tart and former stripper Freddie (Diaz), in an enforced marriage that’s her punishment for stealing from mobster and nightclub owner Red (Delroy Lindo). Reeves argues with his mother (Weld wasted again in hardly more than a cameo), who promptly collapses and dies. Reeves and Diaz have instant sex, and make off together with D’Onofrio in hot pursuit, helped by local corrupt sheriff Detective Ben Costikyan (Dan Aykroyd).

A complicated plot follows with muddled, unpersuasive exposition, but some listenable dialogue, arresting scenes and much visual flair. The depressing panorama of small-time underbelly USA is intricately and convincingly painted, with its seedy motels, pathetic crooks, bent cops, and the characters’ desperation is persuasively etched.

The heady mix of violence, black jokes and a touch of true romance of course recalls the work of Quentin Tarantino. Though obviously inexperienced first-time writer/director Baigelman cannot marshal his resources as incisively as Tarantino, nevertheless the resources are there. Baigelman has romance in the corner of his soul, looking for a happy love story in his dark tale of lives tarnished by society.

A lot of wide-open script gaps are left vacant to the actors to fill in. Luckily they’re up for it. An obviously engaged Keanu serves the screenplay surprisingly effectively, actually much better than it serves him. Apparently stretched by and involved in the material, he acts rather well, making something intriguing out of his unshaven, inarticulate character improbably called Jjaks. It’s brave of him to tackle something as outside the mainstream as this, and a good sign for him that he’s a better actor here than in his 90s mainstream material. So he gets high marks for cred.

Diaz and D’Onofrio are also fine as the white-trash society victims, and Courtney Love is ideal as the cynical waitress Rhonda. Levon Helm, Michael Rispoli and Max Perlich are also in the good cast.

The plot eventually comes hopelessly unstuck and has some terrible holes, most notably that in two different scenes both the male stars fail to notice that Diaz isn’t dead. And the film’s despairing, nihilist mood is hard to take. But there’s some considerable merit here for more patient, adventurous viewers, and posterity may be kinder to it than contemporary critics.

The horrible title is explained by lines of music: ‘I just looked in the mirror. Things aren’t looking so good. I’m looking California and feeling Minnesota.’ Oh and it does take place in Minnesota.

By 2014, it’s Baigelman’s sole credit as director, though he wrote the screenplay for Brother’s Keeper (2002) and the story for Get on Up (2014).

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1606

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