Review - Out of the Blue (1980)

Nearly a decade after the debacle of 'The Last Movie,' a critical and commercial flop so ruinous that he was effectively banished from Hollywood for making it, Dennis Hopper helmed this minor masterwork, possibly the finest moment of his turbulent directorial career. It's a portrait of a broken family, torn apart by a tragic accident then reunited years later, only to be shattered irrevocably by seemingly inescapable circumstance. Patriarch Don (Hopper, all manic energy and howling sorrow) is released from prison after serving a five-year sentence for crashing his truck into a school bus full of children. In his absence, wife Kathy (Sharon Farrell) has taken up with her boss at the local luncheonette and developed a nasty drug habit, shooting up and ignoring her teenage daughter Cindy (Linda Manz). The neglected Cebe (as the girl is affectionally known) gravitates to the burgeoning punk rock scene, puffing cigarettes, swilling beer, tattooing herself and running away from home in open rebellion against her derelict mother and absentee father. Don's return precipitates a catastrophic chain of events, old wounds and deep-seated dysfunctions reemerge, and any chance the family had for happiness, or completeness, is dashed.

Hopper stumbled into the low-budget directing assignment, replacing the film's screenwriter at the last moment, but his signature preoccupations and iconoclastic spirit are evident in all its aspects - from the patchwork rock soundtrack that recalls 'Easy Rider,' to the alienated protagonists like those that appear throughout his oeuvre, usually portrayed by Hopper himself. The conflicted Don Barnes mirrors the director especially closely; both are aging troublemakers, returned from exile and forced to wrestle with their obsolescence in the face of the latest counter-cultural wave. ("I'm a punk," Don sneers at the sight of his daughter's band posters.) What separates this from the filmmaker's earlier, self-indulgent efforts is a newfound restraint, and a masterly control of resources. The brutally honest performances, stoked to their feverish limits, evoke the cinema of John Cassavetes, and are matched by the dynamic photography of cinematographer Marc Champion. His camera stalks nimbly, changes direction suddenly, and circles its subjects as if ensnaring them, only stopping to rest on the most haunting, indelible images. Another telling sign of Hopper's maturation: he cedes the spotlight to young actress Linda Manz, whose soulful, defiant yet deeply vulnerable turn as CeBe is one that is not easily forgotten.