Clay Pigeons
by David Dobkin
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DVD details
Actor: Georgina Cates, Gregory Sporleder, Janeane Garofalo, Joaquin Phoenix, Vince VaughnDirector: David Dobkin
Brand: Universal Studios
Producer: Audrey Kelly
Producer: Carrie Morrow
Producer: Chris Dorr
Producer: Chris Zarpas
Producer: Guy East
Producer: Hilarie Roope
Writer: Matthew L. Healy
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 104 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2010-07-06
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Studios
Product features:
- Actors: Joaquin Phoenix, Vince Vaughn, Janeane Garofalo, Gregory Sporleder, Georgina Cates.
- Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC.
- Language: English.
- Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only).
- Rated R. Run Time: 104 minutes.
DVD Reviews of Clay Pigeons
DVD Review: "There are some people out there who need killing''
Summary: 4 Stars
It's hard to categorize a movie like Clay Pigeons. The film is certainly an interesting mix of genres - part satire, comedy, and melodrama, and it gives the scoundrel the best lines, the most machiavellian aura, and the keenest temperament in the story. There's no doubt the movie, which takes place in a small Montana town, is a work of considerable originality.
The story is fraught with murder, sex, and mayhem, and contains some of the most deliciously convincing characters ever seen on film. There's the stable scout, slatternly tart, laid-back law-officer, magnetic mischief maker, and caustic cop - all of them coming together at different stages to create a maelstrom of confusion and violence.
Director David Dobkin and scriptwriter Matt Healy don't waste a lot of time on exposition: The story opens on a shooting match as best friends Earl (Fregory Sporleder) and Clay (Joaquin Phoenix) test their skills at shattering beer bottles. Earl suddenly turns on Clay, accusing him of having an affair with his sluttish wife, Amanda (Georgina Cates).
Earl eventually turns the gun on himself, partly because he's fed up with Amanda's antics, but also because he reckons that he can set it up to look like a murder, thus framing Clay. Afterwards, Clay returns to the newly widowed, but conspicuously unconcerned Amanda and is disgusted by her lack of distress.
At first Amanda tells Clay to get lost, yet deep down she still desires him. After he spurns her advances, she begins stalking him which results in terrible and fatal consequences for them both. Soon Clay is plunged into an ambivalent fellowship with the engaging visitor, Lester Long (Vince Vaughn). Lester is an enigmatic cowboy drifter, who's swollen cowboy Panama matches his towering personality. Complete with sly giggle, he's aware that he can work his charms on men as well as women.
Soon Clay finds himself having to dispose of a dead body, but to add to his problems, he finds himself confronted with the sardonically deadpanned Janeane Garofalo as a pot-smoking federal agent Shelby and unexcitable local sheriff Mooney (Scott Wilson). Mooney seems enveloped in a melancholic haze from suddenly having to deal with so many dead people, while the permanently tough-minded Shelby is hot on the trail of a serial killer.
Phoenix is terrific as the bewildered good guy, who mostly through no fault of his own lets everything disintegrate around him. Garofalo is also good as the mordant, but focused Shelby, and her reaction when a lusty cowboy attempts to pick her up in the village bar, is absolutely priceless.
Best of all is Vince Vaughn who shows his depth in a wholly distinct, ominous performance. His congeniality covers up a startling penchant for something much darker and his contempt is excited by the ease with which his victims flock to his all American allure.
Clay Pigeons is a quirky, pitch-black comedy-thriller, in which everything turns out the contrary of what you'd expect. With dead bodies piling up all over the place one wouldn't expect movie like this to have such an amusingly mean-spirited groove. But that's why it's so good, especially when one considers the surprise finale, which neatly cleans up all the mess and confusion that precedes it. Mike Leonard September 05.
Description of Clay Pigeons
CLAY (AS IN THE TITLE) IS A YOUNG MAN IN A SMALL TOWN WHO WITNESSES HIS FRIEND KILL HIMSELF BECAUSE OF THE ONGOING AFFAIR THAT CLAY WAS HAVING WITH THE MAN'S WIFE.Set in Montana's Big Sky country, shot in Utah, lensed by Eric Alan Edwards (cinematographer of My Own Private Idaho)--no wonder it's hard to tell where Clay Pigeons lives, or where it's going. A Ridley Scott protégé previously at home in commercials and videos, debuting director David Dobkin aims to deliver us into the blackly comedic badlands of neo-noir, territory mined by the likes of Red Rock West and Fargo. Pigeons launches strongly, with several cruel turns of the screw. Out target-shooting, Clay Birdwell (Joaquin Phoenix) is hit with the news that his best pal knows he's been boffing his ur-slut wife (Georgina Cates) and could take Clay out on the spot, but chooses a creepier revenge--committing suicide in order to frame the guy who's cuckolded him. Naturally, Clay covers up the mess, thereby opening the film's can of very nasty worms. A slick, fast-talking cowboy (Vince Vaughn)--the funhouse-mirror-opposite of Phoenix's sweet, slow farmboy--turns up, and a string of ugly murders begins to play out. Once Vaughn's Lester Long is on the scene, spreading his psychotically giggling bonhomie, Dobkin's skin-deep riff on Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train pretty much belongs to him. The rest of the cast looks more or less like clay pigeons set up by a scattershot script: exceptions include the always-estimable Scott Wilson who transforms his caricature-prone Sheriff Mooney into a character of nuanced humanity, and Janeane Garofalo, as an urban-hip FBI agent, whose single-chick sarcasm goes down in flames when Lester unholsters those big guns of come-hither charm. John Lurie of Lounge Lizards fame contributes a distinctive score, but Elvis Presley acts as the film's patron saint in more ways than one: Clay Pigeons' sexiest, scariest wet work is choreographed to "It's Now or Never." --Kathleen Murphy
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