4.0 out of 5 stars
just how close can you get... and not cross over?, November 4, 2008
This review is from: Ambition [VHS] (VHS Tape)
I really enjoyed this movie a lot. I didn't expect the ending as it happened. Being made early 90's made for some interesting fashion looks but I thought it was a great movie overall. The back of the box tells all you really need to know to catch your interest and the fun starts from there.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Not bad, September 10, 2006
This review is from: Ambition [VHS] (VHS Tape)
This is certainly deserving of more than one star, sorry. While it's not perfect, if you're looking for something at the video store and you just can't nail it down, go for this one. It's a decent thriller and I actually thought Lou did pretty well. Considering the tripe that he's put out lately including Malevolent, the one with the stolen chase scene from Seagal's Marked For Death (nothing like destroying a movie's thunder like the blatent theft of footage) this is good stuff. Ambition is one of those movies perfect for nights when you're up too late. It is deserving of the DVD transfer at this point considering Lou's credibility and the fact that the VHS is getting hard to find anywhere. When I rent movies like this I usually look for them in pairs. You start giving up on new releases so you're mind wanders to the oldies but goodies and after I pick out Ambition, I find myself looking for another obscure but good flick like Alex McArthur's Rampage. The two go very well together for some reason.
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The mind of a murderer, July 2, 2001
This review is from: Ambition [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Actor Lou Diamond Phillips wrote the screenplay for this attempt at psychological thriller by director Scott D Goldstein, which perhaps is evidence of his own over-reaching ambition. As an unpublished novelist who thinks that the story of a serial killer, the Valentine's Day Slasher played by Clancy Brown, is the kick start his career needs. However the indications of the writer he is, even before he chases Brown, are not a good sign. The unpublished novel is an autobiographical "My Father's Eyes" about his perception of LDP's mother leaving his father, played by Haing S Ngor as either yelling at LDP or begging for God to kill him since he has cancer. LDP's smugness is conveyed by being the kind of person who answers their own questions, and things are tough when he's sleeping with his would-be publisher who tells us he "struggles over every word". LDP supplies a narration for the progression of his plan (which telegraphs the resolution) and includes gems like "I set the stage for the psychodrama", and talk of "streamlining" which has echoes of Robert De Niro's "purification" in Taxi Driver, though here Goldstein provides a montage of sharpening pencils, and LDP at the word processor in slicked-back hair. Goldstein introduces LDP as a writer by him having an ashtray by the typewriter with a lit smoking cigarette (funny because I thought the cigarette would be held in the corner of the writer's mouth as he typed). LDP ridicules the writer who has beaten him to the rights of Brown's story of "a man who crossed the border into insanity and how he got back", as a hack and the producer of "regurgitated television". The funniest part of this is the title of the hack's book - Death Sentence. We wonder why Brown actually needs any ghost writer because he's the kind to keep journals, which use a literary style, but when LDP's attention stoops to stalking, rummaging through Brown's garbage and stealing his medication, it's easy to empathise with the serial killer. (Withdrawal from lithium gives Brown this insight via LDP - "The difference between a fool and the insane is that a fool makes wrong decisions based on sound choices but the insane make sound decisions based on wrong choices"). Our empathy for the killer is probably one of the few admirable things about LDP's screenplay, though I like the response to an accusation of bigotry to William Pugh over Brown, being "This man kills people for a living. Racism is not the issue here", and Pugh's "I don't want to be his graduation project". LDP wears his mane of black hair in various styles, the most memorable being a plait in one scene, and the sides pinned back in another and dressed in a pin striped suit where he resembles Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. The Slasher serial killings are skimmed over, and LDP introduces Brown's motivation as seeing sexuality as suffering as a plot point, but Goldstein provides video footage of Brown after the killings recalling Peter Lorre in M. In one scene Goldstein has LDP pacing to indicate his "suffering" which reads as uninspired staging, and there is a ridiculous bookshop scene where a potential buyer doesn't recognise Brown from the book's cover picture whilst speaking to him. However Pugh is fun to have around, easily outacting LDP, and Goldstein gives us a strong visual of the image of a car at night over LDP's darkened face.
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