Hey it’s Steve Stevens from Billy Idol’s band. Isn’t he a great guitar player? Check out his best solos with Billy Idol on Youtube. In any event, the Great Sean Penn played aging American rock star Cheyenne, now living in Ireland. But Jiminy Christmas, his character and Stevens looked like twins. Google says Penn modeled his character after Robert Smith from The Cure, but The Cure blows, so I’m going with THE GREAT Steve Stevens. The also Great Francis McDormand played Cheyenne’s wife Jane. With such an awesome one two punch of a cast, I had high hopes for this movie. Emphasis on high. Sadly, it was not to be. How so?
Penn did a fantastic job playing a really strange character, almost childlike at times, other times reminiscent of a doddering Ozzy Osbourne. However, the other characters were confusing as all hail. For example, who was the younger woman Mary (played by Eve Hewson) Cheyenne was with in a restaurant? Was it his daughter? At one point, he said he had no children. And who was the old lady in the window in Dublin?
Anywho, the story hinged on the premise that Cheyenne’s father in New York City was dying, and he hadn’t seen him in over thirty years. Cheyenne travelled there to see him one last time. Being afraid to fly, he took a cruise ship to the states. When he arrived, it was too late, his father had passed. And then we met the third main character, Mordecai, played by Judd “Alex Rigor” Hirsch. From Mordecai, Cheyenne learned that his father was obsessed with hunting down a Nazi Alois Lange, played by some gnarly old skinny dude (Heinz Lieven) that tormented him in Auschwitz. His father believed Lange was still alive in the western United States. So inexplicably, Cheyenne decided to continue his late father’s quest to find this Nazi. Seriously? Now he’s a Nazi hunter? What the fuck?
In fact, this movie got so far off the rails – let’s get back to Billy Idol. He is so much better than David Byrne’s schlock – which by the way was all throughout this movie. He did the music as well as appeared in a small part as himself. He tried to be an even stranger character than Cheyenne, which didn’t help. And by the way, his music blew. So back to THE GREAT BILLY IDOL:
“Hey little sister what have you done… it’s a nice day for a …. white wedding….. WOOOOOOO!” Only the Uber-cool Billy Idol could get away with that high pitched WOOOOOO in a song. Some rock stars just look like rock stars, and some rock stars look like they could kick ass. Billy Idol has both – I bet even now, even as an old grandpa, he could kick my ass. Even a can of whoop-ass would say Billy kicks ass!
Enough of that foolishness, let’s dispense with the rest of this review. Harry Dean Stanton also had small part which was acted brilliantly – but by then, it was too late to salvage this thing. And hey, was the narrator James Earl Jones? Another irritation, there were no normal characters in this movie – even the singing fat kid was odd.
In any event, this movie started off promising, with a great cast and great acting (especially by Penn) but it was too bizarre and dragged on too long. AND WHO THE FUCK WAS THE OLD LADY IN THE WINDOW???
5 corner of the mouth hair blows out of 11