Customer Reviews

Half-Cocked

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am a big fan of Tara Jane O'Neill's music and found this movie while looking for her CDs here. The reviews on the VHS were mixed, so I didn't buy it. I was still intrigued, so when it was finally released on DVD, I decided to pick it up. Let me say straight out, this movie is fantastic. It is rare that I get done with a movie and feel compelled to write a review. This is a pitch perfect time capsule of those heady days in the early/mid 90s when great indie bands were hitting their stride. This is essential viewing for anyone who ever spent a long night in their local indie club, watching out of town openers, hanging out with the bands, watching bands like Rodan, Helium, The Grifters, Freakwater...knowing something special was going on in the world.

The movie's structure is simple, but incredibly effective. Young disaffected kids in Louisville hit the road with stolen music gear and pass themselves off as a band to get food and gas money and keep moving on to the next town. And in the process,they turn into a real band. Simple, yeah, but it's the journey that makes it. Alternately sad, touching, funny and exhilirating, it captures those times perfectly. Beautifully shot in low key black and white, graced with amazing music---you can feel the exhiliration and the exhaustion, all the highs and lows of a band on the road. Not knowing when or if they will play or eat, driven by hunger and a desire to get out of their hometown. I loved the shots of bridges, freeways, indie clubs...again, it should strike a chord for anyone who has been there or worked their way through a road trip in the midwest.

The performances are straightforward and low key, but perfect for the setting. Tara Jane O'Neill is fantastic. Her combination of adorable good looks, musical talent and plain spokenness make her an extremely likable lead. She is charming despite the situations and she really is the heart and soul of the movie.

I loved it, I am really happy I picked this up. I rarely say that.

So, I wanted to give an unmitigated "thumbs up" review to this so anyone else who was on the fence will buy it and see for themselves. I didn't watch the extra feature on the DVD, but at this point, that is just icing to an already tasty cake. Oh, and if you like Tara Jane, check out her music as well. She is still making great music all these years later.

If a college course would be offered in do-it-yourself, global subcultural studies, this DVD should be mandatory viewing. "Half-Cocked" documents a lifestyle that can barely exist anymore. That it achieved this with a slyly crafted narrative, non-actors, and a natural identification with the subject matter only underscores the potency. On the one hand, it's hard to separate this film with the early 90s or mid-Atlantic bohemianism, but the fact is, such characters as these have existed in every bored suburbia since the birth of rock and roll. probably earlier. In fact, I'd put "Half-Cocked" on the same high shelf as Penelope Spheeris' "Suburbia." Youngers views might identify more with something like "The Big Red Chair" or whatever that movie was called. Anyway, folowing H-C, "Radiation" is a revelation. A year or so later, not only have Galinsky and Hawley become even more adept as technical filmmakers, but they somehow manage to create a film largely in a foreign language that highlights the same dissaffected ennui of those American indie-rockers but this time with a bit more grown up troubles and a more ancient landscape. It's like Cassavetes on a European bender but with better production values. Following these achievements, the filmmakers turned to documentary, which is very good for the field of reality, yet one only wonders what kinds of fiction films they'd be making now. Good ones, I guess.

I will not take away from this movie some good things it has going for it: nice black & white film, decent but not fancy camera work, great music (if you like good noisy indie rock).

What is so-so: plot is minimal and action is slow. I actually like this kind of movie when it is pulled off well, as it lets you linger on the atmospheres and the characters. If you don't like slow paced films, you'll really hate this.

What is bad: the awful, awful, awful acting. Horrible. At one point I thought the guy was intentionally overacting, doing something in character. But he wasn't. Some of the actors are worse then others, but all of the main characters are painfully, distractingly bad.

The acting pretty much sinks the movie. I'd really only recommend it if you are big fan of the type of music involved.