u turn movie review jennifer lopez

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Only Oliver Stone knows what he was trying to accomplish by making "U-Turn,'' and it is a secret he doesn't share with the audience. This is a repetitive, pointless exercise in genre filmmaking--the kind of movie where you distract yourself by making a list of the sources.

Much of the story comes from " Red Rock West ," John Dahl's 1994 film about a man and a wife who both try to persuade a drifter to kill the other. And the images and milieu are out of Russ Meyer country; his "Cherry, Harry and Raquel'' and "SuperVixens'' contain the same redneck sheriffs, the same lustful wives, the same isolated shacks and ignorant mechanics and car culture. "U-Turn'' and "Cherry'' both end, indeed, with a debt to "Duel in the Sun.'' I imagine Stone made this movie as sort of a lark, after the exhausting but remarkable accomplishments of "Nixon," "Natural Born Killers," "Heaven and Earth" and "JFK." Well, he deserves a break--but this one? Stone is a gifted filmmaker not afraid to take chances, to express ideas in his films and make political statements. Here he's on holiday. Watching "U-Turn,'' I was reminded of a concert pianist playing "Chopsticks'': It is done well, but one is disappointed to find it done at all.

The film stars Sean Penn in a convincing performance all the more admirable for being pointless. He plays Bobby, a man who has had bad luck up the road (his bandaged hand is missing two fingers), and will have a lot more bad luck in the desert town of Superior, Ariz. He wheels into town in his beloved Mustang convertible, which needs a new radiator hose, and encounters the loathsome Darrell ( Billy Bob Thornton ), a garage mechanic he will eventually be inspired to call an "ignorant inbred turtleneck hick.'' While Darrell works on the car, Bobby walks into town. Superior is one of those backwater hells much beloved in the movies, where everyone is malevolent, oversexed, narrow-eyed and hateful. There are never any industries in these towns (except for garages, saloons and law enforcement) because everyone is too preoccupied by sex, lying, scheming, embezzling and hiring strangers to kill each other.

Bobby quickly finds a sultry young woman named Grace ( Jennifer Lopez ), and is invited home to help her install her drapes and whatever else comes to mind. Soon her enraged husband, Jake ( Nick Nolte ), comes charging in, red-eyed and bewhiskered, to threaten Bobby with his life, but after the obligatory fight, they meet down the road and Jake asks Bobby to kill his wife. Soon Grace will want Bobby to kill her husband (the "Red Rock West'' bit), and the film leads to one of those situations where Bobby's life depends on which one he believes.

Superior, Ariz., is the original town without pity. During the course of his brief stay there, Bobby will be kicked in the ribs several dozen times, almost be bitten by a tarantula, shot at, and have his car all but destroyed--and that's all before the final scenes with the vultures circling overhead. Bobby comes across almost like a character in a computer game; you wipe him out, he falls down, stars spin around his head, and then he jumps up again, ready for action.

The film is well made on the level of craft; of course it is, with this strong cast, and Stone directing, and Robert Richardson as cinematographer. But it goes around and around until, like a merry-go-round rider, we figure out that the view is always changing but it's never going to be new. There comes a sinking feeling, half an hour into the film, when we realize that the characters are not driven by their personalities and needs, but by the plot. At that point they become puppets, not people. That's the last thing we'd expect in a film by Oliver Stone.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

U-Turn (1997)

Rated R For Strong Violence, Sexuality and Language

125 minutes

Sean Penn as Bobby Cooper

Billy Bob Thornton as Darrell

Powers Boothe as Sheriff

Jennifer Lopez as Grace McKenna

Nick Nolte as Jake McKenna

Julie Hagerty as Flo

Joaquin Phoenix as Toby N. Tucker

Jon Voight as Blind Man

Directed by

• Oliver Stone
• John Ridley

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1997, Crime/Drama, 2h 5m

What to know

Critics Consensus

U-Turn is a lurid, stylish lark that boasts striking moments but lacks the focus and weight of Oliver Stone best work. Read critic reviews

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U-turn   photos.

A two-bit criminal (Sean Penn) meets an attractive woman (Jennifer Lopez) and her spouse (Nick Nolte), each of whom wants him to murder the other.

Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery & thriller

Original Language: English

Director: Oliver Stone

Producer: Dan Halsted , Clayton Townsend

Writer: John Ridley

Release Date (Streaming): Apr 25, 2011

Box Office (Gross USA): $6.6M

Runtime: 2h 5m

Sound Mix: Surround, Mono

Cast & Crew

Bobby Cooper

Jake McKenna

Jennifer Lopez

Grace McKenna

Powers Boothe

Sheriff Potter

Claire Danes

Joaquin Phoenix

Toby N. Tucker

Billy Bob Thornton

Abraham Benrubi

Julie Hagerty

Valeriy Nikolaev

Aida Linares

Laurie Metcalf

Bus Station Clerk

Girl in Bus Station

Oliver Stone

John Ridley

Screenwriter

Dan Halsted

Clayton Townsend

Executive Producer

Robert Richardson

Cinematographer

Hank Corwin

Film Editing

Thomas J. Nordberg

Ennio Morricone

Original Music

Victor Kempster

Production Design

Dan Webster

Art Director

Merideth Boswell

Set Decoration

Beatrix Aruna Pasztor

Costume Design

Mary Vernieu

News & Interviews for U-Turn

Jennifer Lopez’s 10 Best Movies

Critical Consensus: A Brave New "World," A "Step" Down, And No Screenings for "Pulse" and "Zoom"

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Movie Review: 'U-Turn'

As the first Oliver Stone movie — or at least the first one since he became a great filmmaker — to gleefully dispense with sociopolitical significance, U-Turn (TriStar) is an overdue event, a chance for Stone to apply his hypnotic acid-trip-of-the-soul wizardry to something sexy and lowdown. Set in the kind of sunbaked and dilapidated 50-miles-from-nowhere hick town that looks like the backdrop for an apocalyptic beer commercial, the movie is a spectacularly scuzzy comedy of fate, a film noir that winks at you. The hero, Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn), is a gambler who has seen better days (his hand, we learn, has recently been separated from two of its fingers). Driving to Las Vegas, Bobby looks tough enough, with his suavely disheveled jet-black coif, his James Dean postures, and — what else could this man possibly drive? — his vintage red Mustang convertible. At the same time, the film lets us know that he’s basically a disreputable dog.

When Bobby’s car blows its radiator hose, he wheels it into Superior, Ariz., a mining village so cruddy and depressing it’s like Tijuana as a ghost town. The temperature is about a zillion degrees (sweat could be the local industry), and the sun isn’t the only thing that’s overheating. The moment Bobby arrives, bad voodoo seems to emanate from everywhere. It starts with the local mechanic, played — hilariously — by Billy Bob Thornton as a hostile pigpen slob (dirt is practically etched into his skin). This walking grease pit seems to take great delight in inconveniencing Bobby, and, in fact, the slyly sinister joke of the movie is that everything that happens to poor Bobby is, in essence, a form of karma: cosmic payback for his being a hustler and a lout. He’s a man with no loyalty — he’ll say anything to get what he wants — and now the world is refusing to show loyalty to him .

Wandering the streets, Bobby is assailed by such Twilight Zone locals as a blind but all-seeing Native American derelict (Jon Voight) and a dimply, down-home nymphet (Claire Danes) who keeps showing up to bat her eyelashes at him, tailed by her violent hulk of a boyfriend (Joaquin Phoenix, in a magnetic bit of sociopathic shtick). Is there a femme fatale? Do you even have to ask? Bobby catches the eye of Grace (Jennifer Lopez), a sultry beauty so cool and sleek she stands out from Superior like a glass of Dom Perignon atop a dunghill. He also meets Jake (Nick Nolte), her raging psycho of a husband. It’s soon unclear who wants to pay who to do away with whom. Nolte, looking like Tom Waits’ horror-movie cousin, leers and rasps and generally has a wild time playing the scummiest scumbag of his career.

The chain-of-disaster form of U-Turn is, by now, a genre all its own — call it Rube Goldberg noir. I’m speaking of such black comedies of entropic coincidence as After Hours and Red Rock West . Stone, drawing on Westerns from Duel in the Sun to Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia , infuses the genre with his dazzling gift for ambiguous poetic menace. The surprises in U-Turn aren’t simply the plot twists, which hinge on such merry subjects as incest; they’re the haunting flashes of dread, memory, and desire within the twists. Stone, working in the dense channel-surfing style of JFK and Natural Born Killers , makes every shot a jolt, a sliver of ominous perception.

The first two thirds of U-Turn is a rude, seductive head bender. But around the time it turns from day to night, the film begins to lose its tricky aura of borderline surreal mystery. It becomes another rigged, what-will-happen-next suspense game, and you begin to sense just how arbitrary the twists are. Stone was right to want to apply his gifts to a hip, throwaway thriller. By the end, though, he can’t resist inflating it to something larger — a blood opera of sadomasochistic love. Less, in this case, would have been more. B+

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1997 Directed by Oliver Stone

Sex. Murder. Betrayal. Everything that makes life worth living.

When Bobby's car breaks down in the desert while on the run from some of the bookies who have already taken two of his fingers, he becomes trapped in the nearby small town where the people are stranger than anyone he's encountered. After becoming involved with a young married woman, her husband hires Bobby to kill her. Later, she hires Bobby to kill the husband.

Sean Penn Nick Nolte Jennifer Lopez Joaquin Phoenix Claire Danes Powers Boothe Billy Bob Thornton Jon Voight Abraham Benrubi Richard Rutowski Aida Linares Sean Stone Ilia Volok Brent Briscoe Bo Hopkins Julie Hagerty Annie Tien Sheri Foster Laurie Metcalf Liv Tyler Jeff Flach Valeriy Nikolaev

Director Director

Oliver Stone

Producers Producers

Richard Rutowski Clayton Townsend Dan Halsted

Writer Writer

John Ridley

Original Writer Original Writer

Casting casting.

Mary Vernieu Anne McCarthy Alyssa Weisberg

Editors Editors

Hank Corwin Thomas J. Nordberg

Cinematography Cinematography

Robert Richardson

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Seth Cirker

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Lighting lighting.

Jonathan Lumley

Camera Operator Camera Operator

Jerry G. Callaway

Additional Photography Add. Photography

Production design production design.

Victor Kempster

Art Direction Art Direction

Dan Webster

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Merideth Boswell

Stunts Stunts

Tierre Turner Stephanie Finochio

Composer Composer

Ennio Morricone

Sound Sound

David Kneupper Scott Millan Brad Sherman Chris Hogan Gary Alper Peter J. Lehman Rick Morris Brian McPherson

Costume Design Costume Design

Beatrix Aruna Pasztor

Makeup Makeup

Ken Diaz John Blake Mark Sanchez

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Cydney Cornell Melissa Yonkey Dino Ganziano

Canal+ Droits Audiovisuels Illusion Entertainment Group Phoenix Pictures Clyde Is Hungry Films

Releases by Date

03 oct 1997, 14 jan 1998, 22 jan 1998, 06 feb 1998, 12 feb 1998, 23 apr 1998, 24 apr 1998, 10 sep 1998, 05 aug 1999, 04 dec 1999, 20 feb 2008, 30 oct 2009, 06 sep 2003, releases by country.

• Theatrical 16
• Theatrical 15+
• Theatrical 18

Netherlands

• TV 16 Net 5
• Physical 16 DVD
• Theatrical M/16

South Korea

• Theatrical 15
• Theatrical R

125 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by matt lynch ★★★★

"Human beings ain't only just human, you know. They got animals living inside 'em too."

It wouldn't be hard to dismiss this as empty cynicism, or even worse an attempt by Stone to get in on the 90's crime movie wave, and indeed it is a pretty ostentatious, glibly nasty thing (and often representationally ugly on top). Maybe he was just reeling from NIXON's commercial failure. If this is work for hire though it's rife with the signs of a director keeping himself interested, specifically in the aspect of karma that haunts this like it haunts a lot of his films, and that kind of whispers its way in here in minuscule moments of peace. All of the characters are…

Review by Sofa Sinema ★★★★★ 6

-------------------------------- Razzie Awards 1998

Nominee Worst Director Oliver Stone

Worst Supporting Actor Jon Voight -------------------------------- Oliver Stone's Apache leap.

What a time the nineties was for this brand of cinema. Red Rock West , The Hot Spot , Kalifornia , U-Turn , Freeway , Truth or Consequences, N.M. , Phoenix and so many lesser known DTV titles that fellow Letterboxers likely have compiled into lists that I need to peruse. I kind of want to bury my head in the hot sand of that brilliant postmodern glut of sweaty bad boys, even sweatier femme fatales, and overheated chrome that's hot to the touch.

A typically frank and evocative audio commentary by Stone. This darkly pessimistic and colorful comic book noir gets better with every watch, but…

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★ 13

Along with Kalifornia, this is another film whose movie poster has intrigued me for a long time and made me very curious. Unlike Brad Pitt's film, this one is a film that should have stayed a fond memory, since now that I have seen it, it's a complete disappointment.

Starting up, Stone attempted to replicate the style of "Natural Born Killers," but as Ebert noted at the time, the film lacks the little nuance and commentary that one did, instead feeling like a dull attempt at archiving mainstream success without ever becoming a successful film due to its repetitiveness and poorly executed frantic editing that often come rather pretentious.

At times, JLO's acting can feel a bit awkward, but that…

Review by SpaghettiNoir ★★★★ 4

40,000 people die every day. How come you're not one of them?

Same movie as Red Rock West , but Oliver Stone's comic nightmare version is fueled by acid, cocaine, and god knows what else. And it's all set to a '70s-style Ennio Morricone score, which makes sense because by the end this is just Umberto Lenzi tripping in the desert.

Review by DirkH ★★★★ 7

This rewatch was long overdue. I still love it.

I'm not a big Stone fan, but this is turning into one of my favourites. This is in essence a funked up, twisty and turny Noir that works because of some incredible editing and some formidable performances.

Come to think of it, in the cast lies the real strength. Just look at that list: Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Voight, Claire Danes, Joaquin Phoenix, Powers Boothe and Billy Bob Thornton. They serve as a nice smoke screen for Mrs. Lopez whose only job is to look sultry at which she succeeds reasonably well.

Penn carries the film and actually manages to turn his two bit crook into a likeable character, which…

Review by chavel ★★★

Oliver Stone’s trippy visual lark occupied with boneheads and lowlifes. U-Turn is amusing as a no-way-out flytrap, featuring Sean Penn as a scuzzball named Bobby Cooper stuck in neutral while on his way to Las Vegas to pay-off debt to gangsters. Misfortunes begin when the radiator of his vintage red Mustang convertible blows in the hick town of Superior, Arizona. While waiting on the town mechanic (Billy Bob Thornton, the filthiest of rednecks), he gets entwined with a mocha-lips femme fatale (Jennifer Lopez) in a shoulder-strap orange dress. Jealous husband (Nick Nolte), a raging buck-toothed paranoid, naturally wants Bobby the drifter to kill his wife. There will be money.

This is a nightmare comedy melded in dirt, grease, sweat, bloodstains…

Review by Brian Saur ★★★½ 3

One of the darkest, bleakest noirs out there.

Review by jourdain searles

starring: cocaine

Review by Mikey ★★★★ 3

The print of this Oliver Stone film on Amazon Prime look amaze-balls in 4k. I am obsessed with road movies so I had a liking to this film before it’s heavily stylized sound and visuals graced the scenes during the opening credits in a dazzling, gratuities use of music that I liked throughout the film. The thing to dislike here is well known faces of Jennifer Lopez and Sean Penn while Nick Nolte gives in one of his best performances as well as an unrecognizable Billy Bob Thornton. Also, it gets weird at times, very bleak. The Native American analogy is very obvious and I think that Dan Houser got a memorable line in Grand Theft Auto 5 from U-Turn.…

Review by Grooveman ★★★★★ 4

"Is everybody fucking everybody in this crazy God damn town?"

A very under seen and underrated 90's gem.

Review by Jack Bool ★★★★

U shall not pass!

Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 ★★★ 3

The 80s and 90s Neo-Noir Project

It's pretty easy to see why Oliver Stone dresses U Turn up the way he does.

All the little quirky stylistic flashes and the strangely out-of-context music score and the schizophrenic photography. They're all designed to distract us away from about as normal a crime drama as you're likely to see. I don't even think he's being particularly coy about it either.

He seemingly knows that his story is nothing special and although he populates the fringes of his film with fun characters (Billy Bob Thornton and an hilarious Joaquin Phoenix especially), U Turn is mere window dressing. I wonder why a director of his ability, however, chose to do it this way.

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

A man heading to Vegas to pay off his gambling debt before the Russian mafia kills him is forced to stop in an Arizona town where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. A man heading to Vegas to pay off his gambling debt before the Russian mafia kills him is forced to stop in an Arizona town where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. A man heading to Vegas to pay off his gambling debt before the Russian mafia kills him is forced to stop in an Arizona town where everything that can go wrong does go wrong.

• Oliver Stone
• John Ridley
• Jennifer Lopez
• 245 User reviews
• 95 Critic reviews
• 54 Metascore
• 1 win & 2 nominations

• Bobby Cooper

• Grace McKenna

• Jake McKenna

• Sheriff Potter

• Boy in Grocery Store

• (as Ilia Volokh)
• (as Valery Nikolaev)

• (as Julie Haggerty)
• Short Order Cook
• (as Annie Mei-Ling Tien)

• Toby N. Tucker

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia When Jennifer Lopez's character (Grace McKenna) flashes back at the end of the film we see lots of photographs of her as a child. These photographs are actually photos from Jennifer Lopez's private collections of herself as a child.
• Goofs Not only is there a visible line attached to the vulture's leg in one scene, this vulture and all vultures shown in the movie are of a species that does not exist in the United States. There are a lot of those vultures flying around for a bird that doesn't live there. California condors were re-introduced in the wild in 1996.

Blind Man : Your lies are old but you tell them pretty good.

• Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Kiss the Girls/The Matchmaker/U Turn/The Locusts/Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)
• Soundtracks It's A Good Day Written by Peggy Lee and Dave Barbour Performed by Peggy Lee Courtesy of Capitol Records under license from EMI-Capitol Music Special Markets

User reviews 245

• May 23, 2003
• How long is U Turn? Powered by Alexa
• October 3, 1997 (United States)
• United States
• Florence, Arizona, USA
• Phoenix Pictures
• Illusion Entertainment Group
• Clyde Is Hungry Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $19,000,000 (estimated)
• Oct 5, 1997

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 5 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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A sun-baked film noir related in the style of a demented fever dream, "U-Turn" lives almost as dangerously as its wild characters, and gets away with it. Exceedingly raw, imaginative, daring and energized, this rare straight genre exercise by Oliver Stone is loaded with twisted motives, brazen amorality, double dealing, incestuous relationships, subversive intent and hilariously surreal asides. The sophisticated effrontery with which the director presents this blunt and murderous tale will clearly be off-putting to more genteel viewers, but savvy audiences should embrace this as something sufficiently different from the standard bloodlust melodrama to give it a potent run at the box office, with fine results in store internationally and on cable/vid. With its desolate Western setting, grungy characters, liberal gunplay and jagged, hallucinatory visuals, pic quickly puts one in mind of Stone's "Natural Born Killers." But not only does the new effort feature far less, and less explicit, carnage, it has been stripped of any apparent sociopolitical import, the better to look at the contorted antics of its anguished principal characters from a boldly original, almost absurdly comic perspective. Adapted by young crime writer John Ridley from his novel "Stray Dogs," tale makes use of one of the most standard conventions of classic noir, that of a hapless fellow becoming ensnared in a treacherous web of passion and deceit, with an alluring black widow spider at the center of it. Buffs will have fun noting the echoes not only of such noir landmarks as "Detour" and "Out of the Past," but of Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil," various Fritz Lang studies of fatalistic deterministism and, above all, King Vidor's operatic lust-in-the-dust oater "Duel in the Sun."

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

• Remember Me 14 years ago
• Shutter Island 14 years ago
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Jump-cutting and free-associating to its heart’s content, film lands two-bit criminal Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn) in God-forsaken Superior, Ariz., with an overheated engine. Leaving his old red Mustang convertible with malevolently impudent garage mechanic Darrell (Billy Bob Thornton, hilariously rendering the definitive take on white trash), Bobby bops through downtown, where he succeeds in picking up Grace (Jennifer Lopez), a looker in a tight red dress who invites the drifter up to her well-appointed home.

Some heavy flirtation has just led to first base when who should walk in but Grace’s gruff husband, Jake (Nick Nolte), who promptly decks the transgressor and kicks him out of his house. Moments later, however, Jake picks the bloodied Bobby up on the road and asks him if he’d care to murder his wife for a price.

Popular on Variety

Bobby may be a lawbreaker at times, but he’s never killed anyone and gives Jake the brush-off. However, when his bag containing thousands in cash, which he owes to a Russian criminal who clipped off two of his fingers, is blown to bits in an attempted robbery, Bobby is forced to go back to Jake and accept his offer.

In an edgy, high-wire sequence above a deep ravine, Bobby doesn’t know until the last second whether he’s going to push Grace over the side or ravish her. Choosing the latter, and learning a few things about the woman’s tormented past in the process, Bobby soon becomes Grace’s willing accomplice in turning the tables and doing in the beastly Jake, whose private stash of $200,000 would come in handy in setting the pair up in a new life.

Attempting the deed, however, is a difficult and grisly matter, one complicated for Bobby by continuing hassles with the grotesque Darrell and local sheriff Potter (Powers Boothe), the badgering of a wise-ass “blind Indian” (Jon Voight) and repeated assaults by town tough-guy Toby N. Tucker (Joaquin Phoenix), who imagines that Bobby is trying to make time with his tarty girlfriend (Claire Danes).

The climax truly hits “Duel in the Sun” pay dirt, with the surviving characters writhing around on the rocks in the presence of a couple of corpses while birds of prey hover expectantly.

The stylistic fun Stone has in dramatizing this crime of passion thoroughly revitalizes the well-worked genre. The piling on of coincidental adversity, humorous non sequitur inserts and jaunty, goofy music clearly positions Penn’s Bobby as a poor schmuck caught both comically and cosmically in a web of circumstance beyond his control. The underlining of the story’s elemental aspects, such as the frequent allusions to animals and base instincts, is also humorous and legitimately threatening.

The raw edge and incessant experimentation in the direction often puts one in mind of the exciting work done by new and contrary young filmmakers of the late ’60s, and could easily be mistaken for the work of an adventurous artist making his first or second film. Certainly few, if any, directors with as many films under their belts as Stone has is displaying this kind of stylistic urgency and restlessness, without the slightest speck of Hollywood complacency in evidence.

In addition to the accomplished daring of Robert Richardson’s ever-observant, sometimes whipping camerawork and Ennio Morricone’s half-comic, half-haunting score, which in its eccentric instrumentation is reminiscent of his great scores for Sergio Leone, there are enormous pleasures to be taken from the performances. Penn is outstanding as the beleaguered hero, the resourcefulness and quick-trigger aspects of his personality neatly fitting the needs of his often-cornered character. Lopez makes an ideal and yet somewhat uncommon femme fatale, an abused woman who manages to dish out quite a bit of abuse of her own before it’s all over; she also nicely accommodates the film’s late-in-the-game shift in its emotional center to Grace.

Grizzled, gravelly-voiced and seemingly outfitted with some rabbitlike buck teeth, Nolte gives a nasty performance of which the late Lee Marvin would have been rightly proud. Thornton is an outrageous delight, Voight has fun with his insolent sidewalk philosopher, and Phoenix brings slick gusto to his transparently thin-skinned bully.

• Production: A Sony Pictures Entertainment release from TriStar Pictures of a Phoenix Pictures presentation of an Illusion Entertainment Group production, in association with Clyde Is Hungry Films. Produced by Dan Halsted, Clayton Townsend. Executive producer, John Ridley. Co-producer, Richard Rutowski. Directed by Oliver Stone. Screenplay, John Ridley, based on his book "Stray Dogs
• Crew: Camera (Technicolor), Robert Richardson; editors, Hank Corwin, Thomas J. Nordberg; music, Ennio Morricone; executive music producer, Budd Carr; production design, Victor Kempster; art direction, Dan Webster; set decoration, Merideth Boswell; costume design, Beatrix Aruna Pasztor; sound (Dolby SR/SDDS), Gary Alper; associate producer, Bill Brown; assistant director, Seth Cirker; casting, Mary Vernieu. Reviewed at Todd-AO West screening room, Santa Monica, Aug. 27, 1997. (In Telluride Film Festival.) MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 125 MIN.
• With: Bobby Cooper ..... Sean Penn Jake McKenna ..... Nick Nolte Grace McKenna ..... Jennifer Lopez Sheriff Potter ..... Powers Boothe Jenny ..... Claire Danes Toby N. Tucker ..... Joaquin Phoenix Darrell ..... Billy Bob Thornton Blind Man ..... Jon Voight Biker #1 ..... Abraham Benrubi Flo ..... Julie Haggerty Ed ..... Bo Hopkins Mr. Arkady ..... Valery Nikolaev Sergei ..... Ilia Volokh Jamilla ..... Aida Linares Bus Station Clerk ..... Laurie Metcalf Girl in Bus Station ..... Liv Tyler

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This article was written on 17 Jan 2015, and is filled under Reviews .

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arizona , Billy Bob Thornton , blind sage , Bo Hopkins , Claire Danes , crazed kid , debt , desert , drifter , gas station mechanic , Jennifer Lopez , Joaquin Phoenix , Jon Voight , Julie Hagerty , Laurie Metcalf , Liv Tyler , money , Nick Nolte , Oliver Stone , Powers Booth , Sean Penn , waitress

U Turn ** (1997, Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte) – Classic Movie Review 2083

Director Oliver Stone goes for overkill again with another gorefest in this 1997 pounding mix of his 1994 Natural Born Killers and film noir that gives your senses a hammering.

Sean Penn stars as a punk on the run from the Russian mobsters he owes $13,000 to, finds himself in deadly trouble after his car breaks down in an Arizona small-town full of wackos. He’s soon involved with the trampy Apache femme fatale (Jennifer Lopez), who’s married to the much older, jealous Nick Nolte, both of whom propose he should kill their spouse.

An extravagant excess of Nineties new wave gothic style overbalances Stone’s relentlessly quirky and unpleasant film noir, dripping his overblown Natural Born Killers bag of tricks (some of them admittedly impressive) all over what could have been a taut and compelling little thriller.

Penn is entirely acceptable in a huge star role that just needs someone who can be more compelling and sympathetic. Broad though his performance is though, it anchors the movie, fortunately, since all the other roles are performed as caricatures, playing out a cynical screenplay that produces a hollow-centred, violent, really rather sick, movie.

Stone hasn’t learned the difference between hardboiled tough-guy genre thrills and sheer bloody murder, and taut and subtle just aren’t in his vocabulary. This twisting thriller tale desperately cries out for John Dahl’s Last Seduction- Red Rock West touch.

Lopez and Nolte are compelling enough, Powers Booth as the sheriff and Billy Bob Thornton as the gas station mechanic are engagingly over-the-top, but Jon Voight’s local blind sage, Julie Hagerty’s waitress and Joaquin Phoenix’s crazed kid neglect the truth to try to be entertaining. Also in the cast are Laurie Metcalf, Bo Hopkins, Claire Danes, Liv Tyler, Abraham Benrubi and Valery Nikolaev.

John Ridley writes the screenplay from his own book Stray Dogs. Ennio Morricone’s score is just too much on top of all the other extravagances. It was filmed in 42 days in Superior, Arizona.

Rated R for strong violence, sexuality and language.

http://derekwinnert.com/natural-born-killers-1994-woody-harrelson-juliette-lewis-tom-sizemore-tommy-lee-jones-robert-downey-jr-classic-movie-review-2080/

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2083

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Review: u turn bd + screen caps.

U Turn (1997)

REVIEW NAVIGATION The Movie | Special Features | Video Quality | Audio Quality | Overall

Genre(s): Drama, Crime, Thriller Twilight Time | R – 124 min. – $29.95 | March 10, 2015

** Click Here to Purchase U Turn on Blu-ray from Screen Archives **

Director Oliver Stone’s U Turn , with a script by John Ridley based on his novel, is a trippy neo-noir — and yet another in Stone’s series of cinematic meditations on the American character. Not a pretty, but always a fascinating picture, with standout performances from the likes of Sean Penn, Billy Bob Thornton, Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Jennifer Lopez, Bo Hopkins, Joaquin Phoenix, and Claire Danes. The film was shot, in a dazzling variety of styles, by Robert Richardson ( Django Unchained ).

Quick Hit Review: Admittedly, Oliver Stone isn’t one of my favorite directors, and his career has been uneven, yet no doubt stylistically he’s one of the more interesting visceral filmmakers working today. U Turn is uneven but at the same time it’s personally one of my favorite films from Stone thanks in large part to a fantastic performance by Sean Penn who shares some great chemistry with Jennifer Lopez who, along with Out of Sight (released the following year), was a star (on screen) in the making.

SPECIAL FEATURES – 1.75/5

The features are a bit limited. There is the usual 6-page essay booklet .

We get two Audio Commentaries : 1) Director Oliver Stone, originally recorded for a previous release and 2) a new track with Producer/Production Executive Mike Medavoy (from Phoenix Pictures) and Film Historian, and Twilight Time regular, Nick Redman. Neither track is especially engrossing but they are informative with the second one taking a more academic vibe providing background on the film’s history and the difficulties between Stone and Penn.

Also included is an Introduction (2:47; SD) by Stone and the Theatrical Trailer (2:34; HD) .

VIDEO – 4.5/5

U Turn arrives onto Blu-ray courtesy of Twilight Time presented in the film’s original 1.85 widescreen aspect ratio and a 1080p high-definition transfer. Oliver Stone movies were made for Blu-ray and HD, especially for a film as oversaturated as this one was. Colors are blown out to the extreme, showcasing the hot American southwest while detail levels are good for Stone’s style. It appears to be a clean transfer, free of aliasing, pixilation and dust marks and scratches.

AUDIO – 4.25/5

The disc includes a 5.1 channel DTS-HD Master Audio track which has good depth and in a film with a wide range. The dialogue levels are strong but the most dynamic element of this lossless track is the score by Ennio Morricone ( Disclosure , Bulworth ), as well as the music in the soundtrack, and there are no discernible hisses or other ailments present.

OVERALL – 3.5/5

Overall, U Turn is not one of Oliver Stone’s strongest films, although it is one of my favorite of his (taking into consideration I’ve never been a big fan of his), but features a great cast and fantastic performances by Sean Penn and Jennifer Lopez. The Blu-ray distributed by Twilight Time might be limited in features but the video and audio transfers might make it a worthwhile purchase, though as usual, it’s not a cheap release with a $30 SRP.

Published: 04/09/2015

Check out some more screen caps by going to page 2. Please note, these do contain spoilers .

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• "Savvy audiences should embrace this as something sufficiently different from the standard bloodlust melodrama"  Todd McCarthy : Variety
• "This is a repetitive, pointless exercise in genre filmmaking (…) Rating: ★½ (out of 4)"  Roger Ebert : rogerebert.com
• "[It] starts out as a rude, seductive head bender, but Stone finally inflates it into a blood opera of sadomasochistic love"  Owen Gleiberman : Entertainment Weekly
• "'U-Turn' becomes a showcase for the filmmaker's terrific arsenal of visual mannerisms and free-association imagery"  Janet Maslin : The New York Times
• "It's not the best film he's ever made, but certainly the best for a long while (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"  Bob McCabe : Empire

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U-Turn review

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This black-hearted, desert-scorched suspense piece is Oliver Stone's best movie for years. He's finally freed himself from the heavy-handed, political polemicising that has shackled his directorial efforts since his debut, The Hand. With U-Turn, Stone leaps headfirst into David Lynch country - the evil, festering arse-end of small-town America - and delivers two hours of supremely nasty doom-laden film noir entertainment.

This picture was shot in 42 days, for a bargain-basement $20 million, and is pumped full of Stone's ever-bombastic cine-wizardry, broadening out a labyrinthine script with the same multi-film stock, editing-suite trickery that made Natural Born Killers such an empty box of tricks. This time around, the twisted script and flashy visuals match each other perfectly, painting a dazzling turbo-charged portrait of one scumbag's battle with the forces of evil.

Not one resident of Superior is worth a good goddamn, as outlined by writer John Ridley (adapting his own novel Stray Dogs). Bobby Cooper (who's already lost a couple of fingers to some Russian mobsters) may be the worst kind of sell-your-own-grandmother jerk, but he's small change compared with the Arizona sociopaths who drag him further toward the brink of self-destruction. His baser instincts are increasingly tempted by a procession of rural crazies: sneaky, cackling mechanics; shotgun-toting grandmas; love- struck delinquents; and Satanic local businessmen.

Stone kicks his film into high gear with Cooper's disorientating arrival in Superior, detailing the smart-arsed city boy's unsettling bout of verbal one-upmanship with skank-toothed local mechanic Darrell (a sweat-soaked super-hick performance from Billy Bob Thornton). Upping the ante after Nolte and Lopez's arrival, a spectacularly gruesome convenience-store robbery destroys Cooper's hard-won fortune.

Twist after twist follow when each member of the double-crossing couple ask the financially needy out-of-towner to knock off the other, leading to a carnage-strewn final third, which takes the style of classic film noir and whirls it through a gore-drenched blender.

Runty, self-obsessed Cooper is ideal casting for the ever more rat-like Penn, while the other leads, squashed by the cancerous underbelly of the American dream, represent various facets of madness and despair. Jennifer Lopez excels as the adulterous Grace - the first '90s femme fatale to truly match up to the '40s archetype; Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix contribute a pair of amped-up cameos as the trailer-trash kids in love; while Nick Nolte and Powers Boothe (who were previously teamed in Walter Hill's Extreme Prejudice) vie for position as U-Turn's premier villainous crackpot.

Nolte may have the more showy role as the growling, buck-toothed McKenna, but the chilling nutcase honours ultimately fall to the ever-imposing Boothe - the tough cop who's finally revealed as a sexually enslaved, eyeball-popping Tex Avery loon-with-gun.

Veteran Stone cinematographer Bob Richardson takes his trademark restless camerawork to new heights and creates a masterpiece of visual havoc-by-design. He rounds out the actors' characterisations with jarring behind-the-scenes cutaway shots, imparting a breathless merry-go-round feel to the finished film.

Stone's hyperbolic style is ideally suited to this absurdly melodramatic, darkly humorous material: U-Turn's sun-drenched Arizona streets may shine brightly with the desert sun, but they're seething with dark passion.

U-Turn is a colour-saturated, artery-pumping joy to behold, given this director's recent issue-heavy track record. It's a wildly overstated contemporary neo-noir, the perfect vehicle for Stone's jacked-up brand of flamboyant professionalism.

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U-Turn (1997)

Miles from nowhere, speeding down the open road, Bobby Cooper's (Sean Penn) feeling good. And why shouldn't he be? On a path beaten by thousands of small time gamblers before him, Bobby's on his way to pay offal debt in Las Vegas. Russian gangsters had Bobby behind the eight ball. All that's behind him now that he's flushed with green. But just like life, when you think you've got it made, something happens. It's hard to believe where a busted radiator hose will get you.

12 Best Joaquin Phoenix Performances

A look at the career of one of Hollywood's most versatile actors, Joaquin Phoenix.

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Release details.

• Duration: 125 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Oliver Stone
• Screenwriter: John Ridley
• Powers Boothe
• Joaquin Phoenix
• Jennifer Lopez
• Billy Bob Thornton
• Claire Danes

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U Turn (1997)

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U Turn Movie Review Summary

Detailed plot synopsis reviews of u turn, script analysis of u turn, plot & themes, main character, writing style, movies with storylines, themes & endings like u turn.

1997, R, 125 min. Directed by Oliver Stone. Starring Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Billy Bob Thornton.

Reviewed by russell smith , fri., oct. 3, 1997.

Seconds after the first few frames unspool, U-Turn declares itself as an Oliver Stone movie, no help needed from the flickery, peyote-dream credits. Yet for all its unmistakable visual trademarks (hypersaturated colors; mad-scientist tinkering with film stocks and editing technique; sudden presentation of enigmatic, troubling images), this is also the most radical departure Stone has ever made in terms of basic sensibilities. Using the already pitch-dark modern noir style of Red Rock West as a starting point, Stone pushes his story of murder, veiled motives, and sexual double-cross into realms of surreal excess that make John Dahl look like Ron Howard by comparison. The plot revolves around efforts by a hard-luck schmo (Penn) to get his car fixed in a podunk desert town and deliver some money he owes to hoods who are threatening to chop off one finger for every day he's late. But while his car is in the dubious “care” of a hideous redneck mechanic (Thornton, in a gloriously over-the-top performance), he falls into an absurdist hell in which random misfortunes and actively hostile local characters (portrayed in memorable cameos by stars ranging from Claire Danes to Jon Voight) conspire to thwart his every move. As the final stroke, he loses his cash. To earn it back, he accepts a murder-for-hire proposal from a jealous rich man (a grizzled, suitably creepy Nolte) who's plotting to kill his vixenish younger wife (Lopez) for her life insurance money. What makes this all so un-Stonelike is the flagrantly -- even exuberantly -- nihilistic tone of the story. Naysayers who've accused Oliver Stone of being oppressively earnest and moralistic will be astonished at U-Turn's energetic trashing of all major Western concepts of meaning, reason, and narrative convention. Some of this probably owes to the fact that this is the first major feature of Stone's career in which he takes no writing credit; the screenplay is by John Ridley from his novel Stray Dogs. But signs emerged in the reckless satiric tone of Natural Born Killers and ambivalent moral judgment of Nixon that Stone was growing dissatisfied with the righteous declamation of earlier films such as JFK and Born on the Fourth of July. The transition is complete with U-Turn. With a perverse, heedless glee, Stone recycles portentous images and themes (Native American sages, crows, stark desert landscapes) from his own back catalog in conjunction with troubling subject matter like incest and suicide to create expectations of profound moral issues being addressed. Then, with the subtlety of a vaudevillean pie-hurler, he trashes the whole setup, only to repeat the process again and again throughout the film. The ghastly humor of the final scene confirms Stone's intent: This is all an elaborate, cosmic farce, not an Olympian missive about the meaning of life, human nature or anything else. It's a cinematically stunning joke, and filled with remarkable performances (Lopez, in particular, taps her inner resources deeper than ever before) and a delightfully humorous and inventive score by Ennio Morricone, but a joke nonetheless. It seems that, midway through an ever-evolving, resolutely independent career, Oliver Stone has grown comfortable with that. Has his audience? We'll find out soon enough.

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U-Turn , Oliver Stone , Sean Penn , Jennifer Lopez , Nick Nolte , Powers Boothe , Billy Bob Thornton

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Product Description

Director Oliver Stone's U Turn (1997), with a script by John Ridley based on his novel, is a sensationally trippy Southwestern neo-noir-and yet another in Stone's series of cinematic meditations on the American character. Not a pretty, but always a fascinating picture, with standout performances from the phenomenal likes of Sean Penn, Billy Bob Thornton, Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Jennifer Lopez, Bo Hopkins, Joaquin Phoenix, and Claire Danes. Shot, in a dazzling variety of styles, by Robert Richardson (Django Unchained) and highlighted by a score from maestro of maestros Ennio Morricone.

Product details

• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ R (Restricted)
• Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.1 x 5.42 x 0.58 inches; 2.88 ounces
• Director ‏ : ‎ Oliver Stone
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Blu-ray
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 2 hours and 4 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ March 10, 2015
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Jennifer Lopez, Sean Penn
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Twilight Time
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00V4CGD36
• #10,293 in Action & Adventure Blu-ray Discs
• #10,785 in Drama Blu-ray Discs

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