Wild 90

Starring: Norman Mailer, Buzz Farber, Mickey Knox, Beverly Bentley, Jose Torres
Directed by: Norman Mailer
Rating: Not rated
Genre: Comedy, Drama
1968

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Three gangsters (Norman Mailer, Buzz Farber, Mickey Knox) hold up in a New York apartment.

Review:

Tim: In my never-ending quest to see as many movies as possible, I finally stumbled across Norman Mailer's films. I watched his first feature film, Wild 90. I didn't know anything about Mailer before watching this film, so I was intrigued to see what the film was going to be about. I read a little to understand he was a writer (among many other things). After watching this atrocious film, I believe he should have stuck to literally anything besides making movies. Saying that I hated this movie is an understatement. It's so bad that it barely registers as a movie. It's a conceited, distasteful disaster of a film.

So, I want to stress that I understand what Mailer was trying to do here- at least to some extent. This was an experimental film, an attempt to break down the typical structure of a film. So much of the movie is unscripted, which apparently was supposed to be freeing and different? I see what he was attempting, I just don't think it works at all.

Despite Mailer's lofty artistic ideas, this movie features three macho men spouting hard language and locker room talk. It really felt to me like I was watching three baboons posturing and preening. It actually started to disgust me the longer I watched the film. I understand the movie was released in 1968 and it was a different world then, but this movie represents so much of what was wrong with the world in the past and in many ways is still wrong with the world. We watch these three men acting tough and trying to pretend like they're cool. It all feels so utterly pointless. It's too macho, too in-your-face. There's no subtlety or beauty in anything depicted here. It's the kind of portrayal of men that makes you fear for our survival as a species. The dialogue doesn't even really matter- it all descends into animalistic grunts and groans and it made me sick. Based just on this (which I understand is a fictional movie), I have no desire to learn much more about Mailer or his buddies (full disclosure, I did subject myself to two additional Mailer movies after this one). These performances felt all surface level with no deeper understanding of what makes these humans tick. I'm sure Mailer was capable of that, as he was a novelist. It just doesn't show up here.

I'm sure every review of this film will mention the abysmal quality of the audio. It was impossible to understand large portions of this movie, which was both frustrating and a blessing. It was frustrating to commit to watching a movie when the poor quality of the film prevented us from understanding so much of the dialogue. It's probably somewhat of a blessing because the three characters didn't have much of worth to say anyway. Seriously, though, it's a major problem with this movie. It's only 1 hour and 30 minutes long, but it feels twice that long because you're unable to connect with any of the characters. Half the time you can't hear them, and the other half you're not all that interested in anything they're saying. That makes for a fairly miserable viewing experience.

The movie is bad in nearly every sense. The pacing of the movie is off. There's no sense of movement- it's just a bunch of dudes talking crap. Some other people float in and out at various points, but other than bringing a slight sense of novelty to the story, it has so little impact on anything depicted on the screen. Too many scenes last way, way too long. Moments of this film were nearly torturous to sit through. It's simply a badly made movie in all aspects of film.

I thought Norman Mailer did a below average job of acting as well. It was mostly yelling and grunting and none of his performance felt especially interesting. There wasn't enough nuance to his portrayal of this character. I left the film feeling underwhelmed by him. I thought Mickey Knox did a fairly strong job- it was impressive how he was able to convey emotion in subtle ways. His performance drew me in. I can't say the same about Buzz Farber or Mailer- they both put effort into their roles, but they were fairly unremarkable.

I'm all for trying something unique and I'm a big fan of artistic expression, but I simply hated Wild 90. Maybe it would have been better if the audio was actual serviceable, but the film's issues run much deeper than that. This is an inauspicious start for Mailer. Wild 90 is one of the worst movies I've seen in a very long time.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 2



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Beyond the Law, Maidstone