Holy Crap!* Too Little, "Too Late"

A guy named Dennis Hauck must have thought he was pretty hot shit when he scored John Hawkes to play  a smart-alecky private dick (yes, they actually make that lame dick joke in this movie) for the 2015 release "Too Late."  Thankfully, Hauck hasn't made a movie since. Do they ban directors who bomb with their debut film?

Painfully exploitative of women, this Tarantino knock-off features tough-talking guys and dames (most of the latter strippers) tripping over Hauck's "clever" dialogue. Not only are women repeatedly mocked for their looks, but most of them find the homely Hawkes irresistible. (They especially swoon when he picks up a guitar and croons his own Kristoffersonian composition.) I mean, there are multiple scenes of women walking around without pants -- in a movie where the go-to camera technique is long camera shots that conveniently follow the characters from behind. One actress, Vail Bloom (below), who plays Janet, a miserable kept woman of aging mobster Gordy Lyons (Robert Forster), does a good 10 minutes bare-assed (including a tracking shot down a loooong hallway). Your move, Julianne Moore!

The women are lovely, of course, and most of them bring serious acting chops to this chipped beef. Dichen Lachman (below) flaunts her hard body (especially, of course, the bottom half) and goes toe-to-toe with Hawkes, who dares to mock her exotic looks. Talk about noses, pal.

Hauck also lets his directorial quirks get in the way of a bad story. (Hawkes is hunting a stripper to whom he might have a special connection.) He jumbles the narrative so much that you probably won't care how to put the puzzle back together. (Really, all the movies he steals from, like "Memento," are far superior in every way.) He uses ambient music so much that it obscures dialogue. In one scene, in a projection booth at a drive-in theater (ya derivative geek), we get ambient music (a moody Hank Williams cover) and ambient noises. If that doesn't jangle you, then try the long camera takes of conversations that require the camera to swing back and forth between two people. (Hey, there's Joanna Cassidy! Whoops, there she goes away!) Then join me in guffawing as a boxing match at that drive-in (?)(!) features two men so obviously fake-boxing that you wonder, did Hauck not notice how bad they were at that or does he think he's creating a meta-moment.

Little of the above will matter, though, because most viewers will not make it through the bizarre first 20 minutes, which features a woman named Dorothy (Crystal Reed) hanging out in one of those L.A. overlook parks and having painfully long conversations with a pair of bumbling drug dealers (I say, a veritable Vladimir and Estragon!) and then a park ranger, as peril builds like creeping moss. This Movie Dorothy (yes, later (earlier?) Hawkes will utter the phrase "There's no place like home") is a wide-eyed innocent with a complicated but boring backstory. That opening scene, though, is interminable.

But this is all such a weak-armed assault on the senses that you might just stick around to see how awful it can get.

GRADE: D

* -- Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here.

BONUS TRACKS

This is the kind of movie perfectly suited for a song by Joe Tex, particularly one called "You Might Be Digging the Garden (But Someone's Picking Your Plums)." Ahem. But it does boast an interesting soundtrack. We're introduced to Janet as she's slathering on her thick eyeliner to this rambunctious song, "Vibrational Match" by Marnie Stern.

Then there is the corny side of Dylan, from the '80s, with "I'll Remember You" (b/w "Emotionally Yours"):

The director gives some screen time to Sally Jaye, with a live version of "Leave You Alone":

Janet also melts down to this intense purge from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "Nobody's Baby Now." It's a good example of the too-obvious, elbow-to-the-ribs nature of the soundtrack: