Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
In the abysmal action disgrace "Future Kick" (1991), Chris looks a little heavier around the psyche and jowls. He plays "Bang," a cyber-assassin who frequents strip clubs, gets beat up by kickboxing champion Don "the Dragon" Wilson, and bleeds bubbling yellow strips of two-part foam insulation.
Chris turns in the only credible performance in Quentin Tarantino's overrated "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) as Nice Guy Eddie, velour-tracksuit-wearing gangster. He sounds like he's uncomfortable with the dumb dialogue at the beginning, when he's playing grab-ass with Michael Madsen, so he doesn't deliver the lines very well: "Daddy, did you see that? He tried to fuck me! ... You've been locked up such a long time, I thought you'd love this USDA prime beef."
Amusing but dumb eighth-grade white-trash homophobe histrionics, like most things Tarantino (who I think should spend a couple of months scrubbing the skidmarks out of penitentiary-issue boxer shorts, he is so adolescently obsessed with blood, shit, weapons, violence and anal rape). Chris makes up for lost time and is able to redeem his role by doing a lot of snarly gun pointing and sweaty screeching into one of those cumbersome old car-phones.
Unfortunately, this dumb, macho mook gig became a pivotal role for Chris Penn, in that he was rarely allowed to play roles that were very different, ever again.
For example, instead of playing a mobster, he played virtually the same character, only with a badge, in the underrated "True Romance" (1993). Chris plays a cop opposite Tom Sizemore, another actor who got ghettoized and plays only cops or psycho scum. There's not much to Chris' part in this one, but it's a keenly calibrated little performance and the second time in one year he got to die in a major shootout at the end of a movie.
I can't say if I really like Robert Altman or his much adored "Short Cuts" (1993), based on the Raymond Carver short stories. In some cases, it seems like his casting director used what he knew about the nearby Hollywood tidepool and psychologically typecast actors in roles that resonated so truthfully with them, it renders the film nearly unwatchable in that it gives me the skeevy sensation I am complicit in violating the actors, psychically -- I feel I am witnessing some kind of quasi-consensual mental rape that the actors didn't realize the full ramifications of when they signed their contracts.
Chris Penn is almost scarily perfect as the sexually confused, pool-cleaning husband of phone-sex operator cum jaded nasty hosebag Jennifer Jason Leigh. He is emasculated, confused, weak, lost in his sense of himself and his grip on manhood -- he gets inarticulately upset, and Jennifer Jason, his way too adult wifey, manipulates and infantalizes her big baby schlub back into submission. "Aww, bear," she coos to him, in bed, when she senses that he feels rejected and jealous and wounded. "You wanna fuck?" she goo-goos, shoving an armload of plastic toddler toys off their unmade bed -- the devouring mother, vagina dentate, a Freudian psychodrama in sweatpants. "Let's fuck."
Chris goes through a squirming maggot ball of emotions: powerlessness, horniness, wanting to be a good dad, hating his wife, wanting his wife, fury, disgust, helplessness, despair ... all these fester until later in the movie when they get the better of him and move him to lose his shit in a fit of bull-elephant must and beat some girl's head in with a rock.
He was a love-handled Irish traffic cop in "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Love, Julie Newmar" (1995), and was flirted with by Wesley Snipes. He got a little fatter, and did "Mulholland Falls" (1996), which features a more or less indistinguishable bunch of cops and gangsters. I can't remember if Chris was a cop or a gangster.
But then came the jewel in the crown of Christopher Penn's acting career, and this was Abel Ferrara's "The Funeral" (1996), where Chris plays a mentally ill suicidal gangster. Either Chris Penn has the best imagination ever captured on film, or the Penn boys' emotional color wheels are naturally so supremely black that they make Sylvia Plath's look like sample chips for baby's bedroom. Chris was able to inhabit a Jungian shadow-self that any sane angel would fear to tread, in such a hardcore and chilling performance it makes it impossible not to presume that he has actually endured some bone-splinteringly dark nights of the soul.
This is the apotheosis of Chris Penn. He is an Italian gangster hovering over the open casket of his little brother (Vincent Gallo, an ideal corpse). His face paints an entire road map of emotions. He grabs Gallo's suit. "My baby brother," he whimpers, his mouth grimacing in despair. He dissolves into tears. Then, he remembers himself: He's a mobster. The tears turn ugly. He starts hacking out involuntary grief noises that get louder and louder until they escalate into a screaming, spitting, casket-pounding fury. Christopher Walken and other black-clad, sallow-eyed Italo-actorini try to restrain him. Chris Penn's bloodshot eyes go momentarily wide and satanic -- a murderous plot appears in his brain like a fever blister. Then -- he knows it won't help -- he dissolves into blubbering grief again. Then, with a swallow, he snaps his head, pulls himself together, wipes his face, wetly kisses Walken on the face. He is drained, he's wrecked, but he is OK to go to the buffet table.
Nobody really noticed this performance, for some reason, but Chris Penn pulled off as good a shit fit, in that scene, as DeNiro's in the jail cell in "Raging Bull."
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