John Travolta and Morgan Freeman team up in a mystery-thriller made here in the 21st century based on a story written in the 1990s that re-creates many noir films of the 1930s and 40s while being set in the late 1970s.
“The Poison Rose” (Lionsgate Blu-ray June 25; $21.99) not only features Oscar-winner Freeman with double Oscar-nominee Travolta working together for the first time, but also Brendan Fraser, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” villain Robert Patrick, and Travolta’s daughter Ella Bleu Travolta.
And you get to see Paula Deen’s house and yard and an informal ballroom dance by Travolta with a dip of Famke Janssen (The Blacklist, Jean Grey in four X-Men movies, and James Bond villain Xenia Onatopp with the literally killer thighs in “Goldeneye”).
Travolta is the flawed and hard-drinking L.A. private dick with a dark past, Carson Philips, who takes a case in his old hometown of Galveston, Texas. While searching for a missing woman at a sanitarium, he must confront a crime boss (Freeman) who seems to hold a grudge for some past transgression, a shady doctor (Fraser) who seems to be lying about his knowledge of the missing woman’s whereabouts, a sexy club singer (Kat Graham) who appears duplicitous, and his former lover (Janssen), whose motives may be hiding a secret. The twists and turns and action keep coming right up until the end of this 98-minute R-rated film, and even a couple times after you think it’s over.
In the only original bonus feature on the disc, Gallo mentions in the audio commentary that he chose several of the locations for the film spontaneously, such as a pretty fountain across the street from their hotel, and an alley for a shootout that had cobblestones and he felt looked perfect for their setting.
The mood-setting and action-enhancing score by Aldo Shllaku and Marcus Sjowall is one of the strongest elements of the film, though on occasion a little too dominant.
Travolta is often inexplicably avoiding being shot from close range in each of several shooting scenes, and his voice-over neo-noir narration works better than the often clunky dialogue, which he imparts with varying types and degrees of some sort of Southern dialect that comes and goes.
At one point Travolta’s Philips character inexplicably leaps out of a second story window in a futile attempt to grab tree branches well out of his reach, and falls to the ground like Wile E Coyote. Gallo admits this was a cartoon-like moment that he basically inserted just to amuse himself.
But “The Poison Rose” works fine as a Blu-ray movie to enjoy seeing some good actors appear to be having fun with their roles, including a nice father-daughter scene between John and Ella Bleu. And Fraser turns in another oddly amusing over-the-top performance along the lines of his psycho killer character in the recent TV series “Condor,” this time as an equally deranged sanitarium doctor who seems to be enamored with Travolta’s character.
— By Scott Hettrick