Crossroads
by Walter Hill
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DVD details
Actor: Jami Gertz, Joe Morton, Joe Seneca, Ralph Macchio, Robert JuddDirector: Walter Hill
Brand: MACCHIO,RALPH
Cinematographer: John Bailey
Editor: Freeman A. Davies
Producer: Mae Woods
Producer: Mark Carliner
Producer: Tim Zinnemann
Writer: John Fusco
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Japanese (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 99 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-08-10
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- Anamorphic; Closed-captioned; Color; Dolby; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; NTSC
DVD Reviews of Crossroads
DVD Review: Daniel-San's Toughest Challenge....Steve Vai!!
Summary: 4 Stars
Imagine my disappointment when I kicked back with my Reese's peanut butter cups all ready for a good ol' Britney Spears movie and ended up with a movie about Blues people! That was a joke, and probably not my best either.
Crossroads is a great film that takes that old legend of Robert Johnson's deal with the devil and uses it as the basis for an on-the-road Blues saga. Ralph Macchio may study classical guitar at school, but the Blues is where his heart is. He locates the only living person who had worked with Robert Johnson and claims to know the one song Johnson never recorded. His name is Willy Brown and he's in the slammer for murder. Macchio strikes up a deal with Brown: He'll help Brown escape and return to Mississippi and Brown will teach Macchio the unrecorded Johnson song, thus paving the way for Macchio's entry to the Blues scene. You see, Brown also made a deal with the devil at the crossroads, but he feels he got hosed on that deal and wants to terminate his contract. Most of the film is the little adventures "Lightning Boy"(Macchio's Bluesman name) and Brown get into while on the road to Mississippi. At one point they pick up Jami Gertz and she becomes a love interest for Macchio. Macchio, who has lived in New York and comes from a wealthy family, finally gets to live the Blues life and finds it's a poor man's life and very different from simply reading books on the Blues. The last act of the film delves into supernatural territory when Brown finally meets the devil once again at the crossroads. The price of a terminated contract is a guitar duel between "Lightning Boy" and another guitarist under the devil's contract, Jack Butler, who's played by none other than Steve Vai! This is quite a cool scene, but a little comical seeing Vai in his leather pants doing all this metal shredding while Macchio tries to keep up playing Blues. It ends up becoming a duel of neo-classical metal(thank God for Macchio's classical guitar training)!
The film was directed by macho action film director, Walter Hill, and he does a great job creating some southern atmosphere. Jami Gertz is okay, but nothing special. Macchio is miscast if you ask me. Even though he's given this opportunity to live what he's dreamed, he spends the whole movie whining and complaining. Remember in the Karate Kid how he gets so impatient and angry about having to paint the fence and sand the floor? Basically he's doing the same thing here and it becomes rather annoying. He just doesn't come across as "into it" as his character is supposed to be. The real inspired acting choice is Joe Seneca as Willy Brown. Damn this guy gives a good performance!
Unfortunately this movie has kinda slipped through the cracks over the years and now people think I'm watching that wretched Britney Spears movie when I tell them I'm watching Crossroads. Oh, well.
I'd highly recommend this movie. You really don't even have to be a Blues fan to enjoy it, the story is more than enough to make this a very entertaining film. Thanks go to Amazon Friend Dave K for making me think of this.
Description of Crossroads
Eugene Martone (Ralph Macchio, The Karate Kid & The Karate Kid Part II) struggles with the devil and his destiny when he goes down to the Crossroads in this contemporary drama. With a potent blend of adventure, romance, and music, the film takes gifted young guitarist Martone into a dangerous and challenging new world. Obsessed with unlocking the mysteries of the blues, the fledging musician finds cantankerous Willie Brown (Joe Senaca), a master of the blues harmonica, and frees him from prison. The unlikely duo hobos from New York to Mississippi as Martone searches for runaway Frances (Jami Gertz, Quicksilver). With a rich mixture of Delta blues and driving rock produced by Ry Cooder, the film takes Martone and Brown on an intense odyssey that leads them to a dramatic climax at the Crossroads.The legend of Mississippi blues master Robert Johnson has served as a fountainhead for generations of blues and rock musicians, as well as a powerful fable for the dark, often violent mysteries of delta blues. Johnson's mythic deal with the Devil, in exchange for his extraordinary musical gifts, has become a fixture in blues lore and an example of the enduring pull of superstitions that can be traced back to Mother Africa and Yoruba deities. Producer-director Walter Hill (The Long Riders, Streets of Fire) sought to put this uniquely American mystery on film, but when he was unable to secure a script devoted directly to Johnson himself, Hill bravely decided to proceed with a more oblique, allegorical story that retold the Satanic bargain through a fictionalized drama set in the present day. In this 1986 feature, the hero is Eugene, a classically trained guitar virtuoso pulled toward the earthier powers of blues. When he stumbles across a lost blues legend, Willie Brown (a real blues figure and Johnson peer known for his partnerships with Charley Patton and Son House, among others), Eugene begins an odyssey back to the delta country and the crossroads of the title, where both Willie and Johnson had traded their souls for blues power, to help the surviving bluesman renegotiate terms.
An opening sequence, shot in sepia-toned black and white, dramatizes Johnson's own supernatural encounter, as well as one of the bluesman's historic Texas recording sessions, and Hill's visuals combine with frequent collaborator Ry Cooder's reliably authentic slide guitar to offer a promising glimpse of cinematic conjury. Even the satanic villain--a grinning huckster named Scratch--honors the trickster figure familiar to African American superstitions, rather than a generic devil. Willie Brown (Joe Seneca) is likewise a convincing link to the blues past, but Hill's central casting choice--Ralph (The Karate Kid) Macchio--sacrifices all for marquee value, a Hobson's choice that casts a shadow of unintended parody across the film. Macchio's earlier character, not Scratch, haunts this film, and even a nifty duel between Eugene, his slashing fretwork supplied off-camera by Cooder, and Scratch's ax-wielding henchman, heavy metal virtuoso, and one-time Frank Zappa protégé Steve Vai, can't safely rescue the film. --Sam Sutherland
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