Film makers are always trying to take a favorite genre or film and retune it to today’s standards. The problem is that in attempting to take that treasured classic they usually turn it into something it wasn’t to begin with thus losing what they wanted to do in the first place. This is the case with THE BIG BANG, a movie that wants so much to be a film noire detective story but ends up falling short.
Antonio Banderas stars as Ned Cruz, a private eye hired by Anton “The Pro” Protopov (Robert Malliet), a 7 foot tall giant ex-boxer just released from prison for murder. It seems that while in jail, Anton had been receiving letters from a beautiful woman named Lexie, swearing her undying love for him. Once released, he discovered that her address is a vacant lot so he hires Ned to track her down.
The first place they look for her is a strip club where she worked. Anton’s explosive temper gets the better of him and a few beat up bouncers later the pair make a hasty exit. Ned advises him that it would be better if he worked alone at this time and he moves on with his search.
The second person he talks to is an adult film director played by Snoop Dogg. Once more this leads to a dead end as does a talk with a down on her luck actress who hires out to a medical college to portray various mental illnesses. All roads lead nowhere until Ned talks to a mail carrier and finds that the letters sent back to the vacant lot are being forwarded to a small town in New Mexico.
Driving to the town Ned finds out that it’s owned by Simon Kestral (Sam Elliott), a reclusive zillionaire with dreams of physics, ions, and a search for the God particle that have made him build his own particle generator in hopes of creating one. Sure it might result in a black hole where the earth was but he’s searching any way. It is in Kestral’s home that the search finally ends in more ways than one but that would blow the surprise so watch and see to discover what it is.
That is if you don’t mind waiting almost 90 minutes for a movie to get interesting. There are touches here and there that make you continue watching and the art direction and photography are amazing. The film is shot with bright fluorescent coloring and makes it seem to glow in a surreal stylization not seen before. While it does make it amazing to look at, it doesn’t make the twists and turns of the story any more palatable.
The movie tries too hard to be complicated. It delves into topics that are used as metaphors but that don’t do so in such a way that if you weren’t already interested in those topics you wouldn’t catch the comparison. It’s like the old Steve Martin joke from his stand up days where he discusses the size of wrenches and sockets because he thought he was performing for a group of plumbers. If you aren’t a part of the group you don’t get the joke.
The acting is by far the best thing in this film. Given the story to perform, all hands do a great job. Banderas does his best as a tough P.I. and carries it off easily. As the three cops that interrogate him from the beginning of the film to nearly the end, Delroy Lindo, William Fichtner and Thomas Kretschmann are all perfectly suited to the various characters they are offered.
I wanted to like this film and I honestly enjoyed it on a visual level. But having been a fan of film noire and classic hard boiled detective flicks for years I found it a bit of a let down. Still, some may enjoy this one so I wouldn’t totally write it off. If this is the style of film you like then by all means give it a try. If nothing else you’ll see what I mean about the film’s visuals.
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