This article first appeared in The New York Times on July 14, 2000
This article reprint was made possible by Visa.

'Shadow Hours': Night Crawlers, Beware: You Could Lose Your Soul

By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

FILM REVIEW

or someone who can recognize a cliché when he hears one, Michael Holloway sure takes a long time to wake up, smell the mercaptan and realize that his newfound pal, Stuart Chapell, is not the big-time writer he professes to be.

But if Michael did, "Shadow Hours" would not be the tedious descent into cinema hell that it turns out to be.

Stuart, a smug cicerone on Michael's tour of the Los Angeles netherworld, stands for the proposition that it is an ill windbag that blows no good. Part Mephistopheles with his black suit, gleaming black Porsche and pearly white smirk, Stuart is also part guardian angel, determined to save Michael's soul by showing him that the path to goodness lies through the dens of iniquity.

Rarely has debauchery been such a bore. In a film that seems to have been budgeted by the watt, Los Angeles becomes a night town of drugs, alcohol, sex and seedy premises that quarter everything from orgies and sadomasochism to bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred fights and, shades of "The Deer Hunter," Russian roulette played for money.

Written and directed by Isaac H. Eaton and starring Balthazar Getty, one of its co-producers, as Michael, and Peter Weller as Stuart, "Shadow Hours" is a sluggish tale of redemption dragged down on the one hand by Michael's monotonous depression and on the other by the asinine dialogue furnished Mr. Weller.

Even with a murder investigation subplot and all sorts of sketchily rendered sin, "Shadow Hours" remains a film without dramatic momentum, an involving protagonist or more than a skittishly voyeuristic and superficial approach to its conflict between good and evil.

When first encountered, the hangdog Michael is trying to recover from a past of drugs, alcohol and treatment centers. Enrolled in a group-support program, he has the good fortune to have a loving, pregnant wife, Chloe (Rebecca Gayheart), and the not-so-good fortune to have a depressing, low-paying job on the graveyard shift in a self-service gas station that also peddles sodas and snacks.

Owned by the drawling, advice-spouting Roland Montague (Brad Dourif), the premises, besieged occasionally by raving derelicts, drug-addicted robbers and combative husbands and wives, are also across the street from the apartment house where a serial killer with a habit of twisting his victims' heads 180 degrees has struck again.

With surroundings like these, little wonder that the weak-willed Michael is primed to accept the ever-so-friendly Stuart's invitation to do a bit of night crawling, especially after Stuart decks him out in a new suit and arranges for him to win a few thousand dollars at one of those bloody brawls he likes to frequent.

So it isn't long before Michael is back to swilling hard liquor, puffing on a "magic cigar" while Stuart fondles a couple of bare-breasted hookers in a den of evil, snorting cocaine and lying to poor Chloe, who would dearly and wisely like to move somewhere up north.

By this time, between the people with the fishhooks in their faces and the Russian roulette game, not to mention the creeps around the gas station, Michael is beginning to get a bad case of the frights.

"You have to go all the way down or you'll never finish it," Stuart has been telling him.

As a cautionary tale, "Shadow Hours" may not persuade everyone to swear off sin, but anyone who buys a ticket to it seems likely to learn to become more discriminating in choosing movies.

"Shadow Hours" is rated R (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes scenes of sex, drug use, sadomasochism, bloody fights and gunplay.

PRODUCTION NOTES:

'SHADOW HOURS'

Written and directed by Isaac H. Eaton; director of photography, Frank Byers; edited by Annamaria Szanto, Clayton Halsey and Bill Yarhaus; music by Brian Tyler; production designer, Francis J. Pezza; produced by Peter McAlevey and Mr. Eaton; released by cobiCanWest Entertainmentcoei. Running time: 93 minutes. This film is rated R.

WITH: Balthazar Getty (Michael Holloway), Peter Weller (Stuart Chappell), Rebecca Gayheart (Chloe Holloway), Peter Greene (Detective Steve Adrianson), Michael Dorn (Detective Thomas Greenwood), Richard Moll (Homeless Man), Frederic Forrest (Sean) and Brad Dourif (Roland Montague).