Barbara Bain
American Gun Review
OK
James Coburn's final film went straight to video, and alas it's nothing special. American Gun tells the story of Martin Tillman, whose daughter (Virginia Madsen) is suddenly shot and killed. (On Christmas, no less.) He then does possibly the least sensible thing on earth: He goes on a nationwide journey to find out where the gun that killed her came from, and whose hands it passed through on the way to his neck of the woods. This leads him from the gun factory to the dealer to various thugs until he gets all the way back home. Putting aside the fact that it would be next to impossible to follow such a chain of ownership, we immediately wonder how a geriatric like Coburn is going to handle all this travel -- and it ain't exactly to the most scenic parts of the country.Never mind all that, this is a journey of self-discovery, as Martin has some demons he's obviously trying to exorcise. He's got a granddaughter to atone with, a wife who's a bit distant, and a dead daughter, of course. By the end we've got a whopper of a secret in store, but still it's a little hard to swallow this Twenty Bucks-style road trip.
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Panic Review
Excellent
A brilliantly observant, darkly humorous and immaculately acted movie about an average suburban father in the throes of a midlife crisis, "Panic" bears an vague, off-kilter resemblance to "American Beauty" in style and subject.
Its central character is a meek and neurotic man in his 40s (William H. Macy) whose growing fixation with a sexually conflicted nymph (Neve Campbell) half his age is turning his life upside-down. The two films share a similar dysfunctional domesticity as well, and a crisp but sparse visual elegance with just a pinch of excess color.
But Alex (Macy), the sympathetic anti-hero of "Panic," has a much bigger secret than his newfound temptation for a younger woman. Alex is a hit man -- and he's just not sure he's comfortable in that line of work anymore.
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