CRIME AS TRAGEDY: LIGHT SLEEPER, ONE FALSE MOVE
There are a lot of reasons why gangster films, or crime dramas, have remained a durable genre. For one thing, cities (where gangsters usually take up), have been with us since film began, and have become increasingly prevalent (as opposed to the vanishing frontier, which is probably one reason why Westerns are no longer a major force). And, as I've alluded to earlier, crime dramas can be used to examine society's ills, especially since those ills are often one of the leading factors towards those crimes being committed in the first place. But as the GODFATHER movies showed, crime dramas can also be great character studies. Two such examples in 1992 were Paul Schrader's LIGHT SLEEPER and Carl Franklin's ONE FALSE MOVE.
Though Schrader has directed many of his own films, he's still probably most famous for writing Martin Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER, his tour of New York's mean streets. Schrader's film here echoes that earlier film in that it's about a man who is trapped, he feels, by circumstances, and attempts to get out. But whereas Scorsese gave his film a heated passion, Schrader plays it cool, but with just as much understanding.
The nominal hero of the movie is John Le Tour (Willem Dafoe), a drug dealer, though his clientele is the yuppies of the city. He was a former junkie himself, but has since kicked the habit, and does nothing more than deal the drugs and act almost as a father confessor to his buyers (one of them, played surprisingly well by David Spade, even waxes theological when he claims that any argument about the existence of God is proof that God exists). But things are catching up for LaTour. His bosses, Ann (Susan Sarandon) and Robert (David Clennon) are planning to leave the business and start a cosmetics line. He runs into Marianne (Dana Delany), his ex-wife, who used to be a junkie but is now cleaned up. He wants her back, claiming he's reformed, but she's extremely wary of him. There was also a woman murdered in what's suspected as being a drug-related crime, and a detective (Robert Cicchini) is hot on LaTour's trail. Finally, Teresa (Mary Beth Hurt), a psychic LaTour often visits, tells him he's going to be betrayed by a woman. So LaTour buys a gun, and things, of course, turn bad.
This is certainly a familiar tale, but Schrader makes it a well-told one. Many critics compared the film not only to TAXI DRIVER, but also to Schrader's own AMERICAN GIGOLO. That film, however, seemed overly fascinated by surfaces, and while the role may have intended to be similar to Travis Bickle, Richard Gere played him as a self-satisfied stud. LaTour may be somewhat idealized as far as drug dealers go, but what's interesting about him is how trapped he is, in a way, by money. He claims, in the voice-overs he delivers of his diary (as with Travis Bickle, he can't sleep, so he keeps a diary), that he feels a connection with his clients, but he just doesn't think he can afford to do anything else. And unlike Travis Bickle, who thought society was sick and he was the one to restore it, LaTour sees the sickness may really be in himself.
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