Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

We're in Florida, so inevitably this is a tale of a guy who makes the mistake of getting involved with a woman who is unhappily married to a rich dude. The sap in question is homicide detective Kyle Bodine, played by Ed Harris.  Given his job it is very predictable that (a) the husband will get killed (b) Kyle will be implicated in the killing, and (c) he will be investigating the crime.   Sure enough all this comes to pass, with the important wrinkle that it is Kyle's junior partner Lamar (Benicio del Toro) who does an ace job of working out what happened.  It turns out there is a good reason for his excellent police work in this particular case, which we'll get to. The femme fatale is Rachel (Madeleine Stowe) who is married to nasty Charles Dance, who himself is having a steamy affair with one of his employees, and who has a habit of knocking Rachel around.   Kyle falls for Rachel in a big way, and considering the scene where she undresses before jumping ...

Fun is not necessarily the first word that comes to mind when I think of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, ‘Boogie Nights’ notwithstanding.    But right from the outset this film signals that it is going to have a comedic or satiric edge to it, with a frankly bizarre scene between a black and fearsome freedom fighter Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) and the very white Colonel Stephen J Lockjaw (played wonderfully well by an almost unrecognisable Sean Penn), in which the latter becomes sexually aroused in a ridiculous manner which had me worried about where the film might be going tone-wise. Perfidia is in a relationship with Pat (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), both of them being members of a resistance group named the French 75.  When she  gives birth to a baby girl he naturally assumes he is the father, oblivious to the fact that she has been enjoying sexual high jinks with Lockjaw.    We then get some quickfire scenes, leading to Perfidia ratting on fellow French 75 m...