Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Let’s see… take a small slice of science fiction centering around something called the God Molecule, add in a hard boiled Raymond Chandler neo noir private dick, throw in a seven foot Russian boxer who apparently has the ability to transport like he’s in a Star Trek episode, you gotta have some missing diamonds and a healthy dose of a fatal female who is also a stripper that may or may not exist, put it in a blender and you have Tony Krantz’s latest movie ‘The Big Bang’. Could all these disparate elements possibly come together and make a good movie? Oh good heavens no, but where else are you going to see Sam Elliot, Bill Duke and Delroy Lindo in the same movie with an exploding midget?

Grizzled private dick Ned Cruz (Antonio Banderas) is being grilled by hardcore detectives Frizer (Thomas Kretschmann), Poley (William Fitchner) and Skeres (Lindo). Cruz isn’t looking all that good, bloodied and beaten and blinded, he could probably stand to see a doctor, but the detectives aren’t letting my man go anywhere until he tells them why everywhere he goes there’s a trail of dead bodies behind him.

It starts with the materializing seven foot Russian boxer (Robert Maillet) who has hired Cruz to locate his prison pen pal and one true love Julie the Stripper (Sienna Guillory). Actually it starts with a movie star (James Van Der Beek) and the exploding midget but that’s neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things and was probably just stuck in there because of the dearth of exploding midgets in cinema.

Anyway, it’s all mighty complicated because the boxer should be serving a life term in prison with the whole rigmarole of having something to do with thrown fights, dead mob nephews and missing diamonds, but he’s out and wants to find his lady love. Nobody’s seen this woman for a while, assuming she’s a real person, but Cruz being the crack detective that he is has found a trail. The problem is that everybody Cruz talks to about this situation ends up in a bad way.

Cruz’s search eventually takes him to New Mexico or Utah or Arizona, I can’t rightly remember but there’s a lot of desert, where he meets a wise waitress of loose moral substance (Autumn Reeser), a few vicious Sikh’s and the world’s richest man (Sam Elliott) who has built his own molecular accelerator chamber to create a brand new universe which could very well destroy the one we are living in right now. I think that’s it.

So if I were making a movie there’s a good chance that a lot of people that are in this movie would also be in my movie, with the possible inclusion of Salma Hayek, Tony Todd, Lance Henrikssen and Meagan Good. I don’t know what these awesomely cool people would do in my movie since I’m told you need a script to make a movie, but most movies I’ve seen recently don’t seem all that concerned about that, so why should I? Take ‘The Big Bang’ for example. This is a movie that looks fantastic. I mean it looks like brand new money with its fancy visuals, cool looking actors, classic cars and the like. Director Tony Krantz’s resume lets us know that he mostly makes his money producing stuff, but every once in a while he gets the urge to direct and the movies he directs are usually way off the beaten path such as ‘Otis’ and ‘Sublime’ and ‘The Big Bang’ is no different because it certainly doesn’t follow any path that I’m familiar with. And it’s the somewhat unconventional presentation that will probably determine whether or not you like this movie.

The narrative, as it were, is somewhat scatterbrained and is virtually all over the place as we follow Cruz from one slick looking set piece inhabited by a cool actor to the next. Making things looks cool while finding a place to stick folks like Bill Duke or Calvin Brodaus in the middle of these cool set pieces in this movie seemed to be priority number one, with making this nonsense make any sense being an afterthought. Because of this lack of anything resembling a coherent storyline, all the cool scenes and awesome actor’s kind of just run together to form something resembling a clump of beautiful confusion. Now some of this confusion is gloriously distracting, such as watching Sienna Guillory prance around in her underwear or watching William Fichtner try to close the book on over-acting or listening to Bill Duke say something cool despite the fact I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about… but it’s Bill Duke and it sounded cool coming out of his mouth. Same for Sam Elliott saying something really important. Yes, the psychobabble coming out of his mouth may or may not have meaning to you in regards to this movie, but it’s coming out of the mouth of Sam Elliot so it sure does sound important. The only reason I drive a Dodge Ram is because Sam Elliott told me to buy one.

Now the story in ‘The Big Bang’ isn’t complete confusion because at its base it pure simplicity. Detective must find missing girl. Doesn’t get much simpler than that. Cross dressing physicist, God molecules, flaming midgets and occasional shots of Antonio Banderas’ bare ass, among other things played havoc with this simplicity. It’s probably worth seeing just for the spectacle of it all, but I don’t think we can call ‘The Big Bang’ a good movie, at least not with a clear conscious.