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'Suicide Kings'
By Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 17, 1998
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Denis Leary and Christopher Walken star in "Suicide Kings."
(Live Entertainment)
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Director:
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Peter O'Fallon
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Cast:
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Christopher Walken;
Denis Leary;
Jay Mohr;
Henry Thomas;
Sean Patrick Flanery;
Jeremy Sisto;
Johnny Galecki;
Laura San Giacomo;
Laura Harris;
Cliff De Young |
Running Time:
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1 hour, 46 minutes
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Blood, shooting, plentiful profanity and topless female dancers
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Former TV and commercial director Peter O'Fallon makes a halfway respectable feature debut with a visually stylish and well cut-if ultimately disappointing-suspense film.
In the end, the tortuous and superficially clever mystery plot about the kidnapping of dangerous mobster Charlie Barrett (Christopher Walken) by an inept band of five prep school chums does not hold up to rigorous inspection. The more you scrutinize its minor inconsistencies (involving not only the time line but an unseen yet oft-discussed severed body part) the more unanswered questions arise.
Nevertheless, Walken is his usual riveting self, a bundle of volatile tics shrink-wrapped inside a veneer of reptilian charm. Even though he spends virtually the entire film duct-taped to a chair, his calculated yet explosive performance runs rings around those of his co-stars, who include the able Johnny Galecki (formerly of TV's "Roseanne") and Henry ("E.T.") Thomas as nervous kidnappers.
In the role of Barrett's henchman Lono Vecchio, the perpetually angry comedian Denis Leary provides moments of dark humor as he and a partner conduct a hysterically banal ongoing conversation about a $1,500 pair of stingray leather boots. Still, the mixture of tension, yuks and horrific violence at times reminds one of nothing more than a poor man's "Pulp Fiction."
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