GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE April 6, 2001

you're invited to the HIV/AIDS PASSOVER SEDER

ELEBRATION ofLIFE and FREEDOM

Wednesday, April 11, 2001 (fifth night of Passover)

6:30 9:00 pm

Park Synagogue Main

3300 Mayfield Road, Cleveland Heights, Ohio

RSVP by April 6, 2001

No cost, but reservations are required. Limited seating.

Everyone is welcome

Please bring a donation of unopened multi-vitamins

to be sent to AIDS organizations in Africa.

you would like more information, please call Carol Wolf at Jewish Family Service Association 216.292.3999

Supported by The Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation

and The Maurice Saltzman Youth Panel.

Jewish Family Service Association

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eveningsout

Fun, and some new gay ground, in this star vehicle

by Kaizaad Kotwal

The film season after the holidays and right around the Academy Awards is usually bland, and cinephiles end up scraping the bottom of the celluloid barrel. But even in this off-peak time in Hollywood, there is sometimes a movie that is fun. full of laughs and thrills, and exudes charm in every frame. This

year that film is The Mexican.

The title refers to an antique hand-

gun,

crafted by a gunsmith in a small

village

Mexico. The gun

is steeped in an aura of folklore, glorious myth and conflicting happenstance,

and

everyone wants their hands on it.

It's not that the gun is hard to find. It's getting

it back to the U.S.

James Gandolfini

from Mexico that proves to be the stuff of loopy escapades, lots of sleazy mayhem and a good barrel-full of laughs.

Brad Pitt plays Jerry. a bumbling slacker, who is indebted to his crime boss and must do him one last favor-to retrieve the Mexican. Julia Roberts plays Jerry's girlfriend Samantha, who is tired of her man being away on these underworld sojourns. Samantha also dabbles in and babbles on about pop psychology. self-help mantras, and relationship reparations.

Jerry faces a dire choice at the start of the film. If he doesn't go to retrieve the gun, he will become food for the fish. If he does go, his girlfriend says she will leave him and go off to Las Vegas.

Since being dead doesn't do his relationship much good, Jerry takes his chances with the trip, hoping he will somehow be able to get Samantha back when he returns.

As Jerry goes off to Mexico and Samantha traipses off to Las Vegas. they run into a menagerie of interesting, odd and bizarre characters in this crazy tale of a guy, his gal and a cursed gun from south of the border.

The film is nothing more than a road flick with plenty of fun, twists and bumps along the way. When Dreamworks announced last year that it would be producing the film with Pitt and Roberts, two of the biggest stars in the Hollywood galaxy, the hype and hoopla was already full-blown. For the most part the film lives up to the buzz and Roberts and Pitt exude plenty of charm, charisma, and chew up the scenery along the way.

While Jerry is retrieving the gun in Mexico, he runs into many hurdles that

prevent him from returning with the weapon. At the same time, Samantha is taken hostage by a man calling himself "Leroy." to ensure that Jerry will return with the gun.

This adds new twists to the already convoluted plot. One of the more refreshing and surprising ones is that Leroy is gay.

As played by James Gandolfini of The Sopranos, Leroy is one of the more interesting, complex and non-clichéd gay guys to have graced the silver screen. He is a big, tough, macho hit man with a past more colorful than the rainbow flag itself. As Samantha and Leroy stay together. waiting for Jerry to bring the Mexican

home, their relationship flowers into one of the film's most interesting and centered sub-plots.

On the way to Vegas, Leroy cruises a guy at a diner, and the man ends up joining them. Leroy and his newfound mate end up spending the night together. in the Las Vegas hotel.

In our age of Will and Grace and Queer as Folk it is easy to become jaded about the depictions of gays in mainstream entertainment. But Gandolfini's character is somewhat of a landmark for a number of reasons. First, because it appears in a mega-budget. blockbuster Hollywood film. Second, because the character explodes a lot of stereotypes.

Third. because the character actually falls in love and even has sex (implied as it may be) while we still wait for Will to get a boyfriend. much less have sex.

Finally, this character is not peripheral but rather integral to the film, and to Julia Roberts's character.

Who'd have though that Roberts would ever play a fag-hag and that Gandolfini would play a soft-as-a-down-feather-pillow hit man? The two generate plenty of laughs, lots of great on-screen chemistry and even a couple of misty-eyed mo-

ments.

Gandolfini is marvelous as Leroy.combining toughness with sensitivity, seriousness with broad humor and a butch physicality with a softer emotional side. And he. together with Roberts, generates a lot of on screen warmth and joy. The rest of the cast is fun as well. Pitt turns in another high-energy, rather humorous turn as a bumbling guy with a heart of gold.

There is also a surprising cameo at the end of the film that is solid and welcome.

As directed by Gore Verbinski, the film is a roller coaster of a ride, filled with thrills. chills. lots of action, and gobs of mushy romance and sexual sparks. But Verbinski and his team are a bit overindulgent, and the film lasts 20 to 30 minutes too long. Nevertheless, it is worth a view. Some of the film's most creative and interesting sequences occur when the 19th century folklore behind the gun are recreated in sepia tones, with a tongue-in-cheek aura of soap-operatic mystery and over-wrought romance.

It's interesting to note that the only people who get a less-than-flattering depiction in this movie are the Mexicans. For the most part they are dirty, drunken, illiterate foils to be laughed at as opposed to laugh with. So, here we have a film where gay depictions break through some stereotypes. while Mexicans are left to grovel in the age-old morass of crummy images. It's so like Hollywood. One step forward. two steps back.