Slam Dance

In the 1980s, film noir experienced a remarkable renaissance in Hollywood. On one hand, there were elaborate classic remakes such as »The Postman Always Rings Twice« (1981) and »Against All Odds« (1984). On the other hand, David Lynch, Michael Mann, and the Coen brothers reinvented the genre entirely. Yet the wildest, most innovative, and subversive film noir of those years is Wayne Wang's »Slam Dance«. Don Opper's screenplay propels the cartoonist C.C. Drood, played by Tom Hulce, through a surreal Los Angeles of corrupt cops, neurotic killers, and a decadent high society. A ludicrous conspiracy recalls Roman Polanski’s »Chinatown« (1974). However, Don Opper overlays his intricate story with a glaze of dark humor. His protagonist, Drood, is not even an antihero, but an everyman incapable of compassion or love, whose amoral pursuits reveal the emptiness and coldness of the dazzlingly seductive Reagan era.