About two-thirds of the way through "Palmetto" -- a steamy film noir about lust, money and revenge -- it becomes more than clear that it is nothing but an R-rated version of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," without the animation.
The resemblance is subtle until "The Dip," the cartoon-killing acid of "Roger Rabbit," makes its first appearance in "Palmetto," albeit under a different name and only killing mere mortals. But at that point, it all makes sense.
Woody Harrelson plays Harry Barber, a recovering alcoholic who is out of work and dependent on his tough, brunette girlfriend. Sound a bit like Bob Hoskins' beleaguered detective?
Instead of fearing to re-enter Toontown, Harry fears returning to Palmetto, where he was previously framed and sent to jail. But Harry gets drawn back into that small Florida town and its stifling heat, which leaves a permanent sweat across his brow.
Enter Jessica Rabbit, I mean Elisabeth Shue, as Rhea Meurleux. Although Shue may not have Jessica's bust, she certainly has the walk down. And to capitalize on that, director Voker Schlondorff makes sure there are more close-ups of Shue's own well-drawn derriere than of her face.
Rhea is married to an ailing millionaire and lives in the largest house in Palmetto with her step-daughter and weasel-like henchman, played by Michael Rapaport. Rhea is unhappy with her meager allowance, and, luckily, so is her teenage step-daughter Odette (Chloe Sevigny).
So they hatch a phony kidnapping scheme to milk an extra $500,000 out of the sick old man and they draft Harry to do the legwork. How do they get the law-weary Harry to agree? Sex. Rhea makes use of all her ample gifts and her step-daughter turns out to have the body of a Calvin Klein model and the eagerness of Monica Lewinsky. Harry drafts the ransom note and picks up the money, but he senses there are a few more people at work here.
The film works in overdrive to make us forget we have seen this film a hundred times before ("Body Heat," "The Last Seduction," "China Moon" etc.). The tough-guy dialogue is laid on pretty thick and writer E. Max Frye makes too many failed attempts at clever double-entendres.
The pacing is slow and steady, but never picks up when the climax comes and Harry's life spins wildly out of control.
Only Woody Harrelson manages to rise above the mediocrity. His Harry knows he is being played and by whom. What he does not know is how smart the people he is going up against are.
We can see those gears churning in Harry's not-so-bright head as he tries to weigh all his options and avoid the dead-ends characters like him tend to run into, and it is hard not to feel for the guy when he gets beaten down by yet another miscalculation.
And he runs into plenty of miscalculations. First of which, the police are far more professional than he had hoped, but still not all that bright. When, by rather cruel fate, he ends up working for the police, he gets to see his mistakes first hand.
As it turns out, none of the characters are all that intelligent in "Palmetto." One cannot help but wonder who could be masterminding the whole thing, when everyone seems so helplessly stupid.
Gina Gershon is completely wasted as Harry's girlfriend, who appears relatively unaffected when dead bodies starts turning up around her.
Shue can handle the sultry vixen part of her role, but when it comes time for her to get mean and nasty, she gets a little lost. By the end of the film, Shue goes a little too over-the-top and seems to be channeling Norma Desmond.
In the end, when Harry is in an abandoned warehouse, dangling by a crane over a vat of acid, I was expecting Benny the Cab to bust through a wall and save the day. It certainly would have broken up the monotony of the film.
