‘Out of the Blue’ Film Review: Soft-Boiled Noir Delivers Femme-Fatale Flatness
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Early on in Neil LaBute’s “Out of the Blue,” a pair of James M. Cain novels get checked out by Diane Kruger’s cool, composed seductress at an elegant old library.
Unfortunately, the writer-director’s bid to evoke the murderous lust of hard-boiled staples “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Double Indemnity” is itself plenty checked out, a zipless exercise about as noirish as a commercial for household cleaning products.
Few careers are as mystifying in their longevity as LaBute’s, whose empty misanthropy and gotcha dramatics across theater and movies (“In the Company of Men,” “The Shape of Things”) were once the epitome of soured-soul indie cachet. His film career of late — whether directing his own screenplays or for-hire gigs — has been divorced from any meaningful expectations or promise or acclaim, but it’s still trudging along. “Out of the Blue,” which only ever feels tossed off, conjures the same head-scratching about its existence: If an adulterous mystery in the Cain vein isn’t going to dazzle with its dialogue or titillate with its temptations, why is it there?
And yet, once one of these stories starts, one can’t help but want the best (meaning the most enjoyably troubling) from the possibilities that arise when library worker Connor Bates (Ray Nicholson, “Licorice Pizza”), while on his morning lakeside run, encounters a beautiful woman alone in a red swimsuit staring across the water. Semi-flirty chitchat between beautiful strangers — he’s shirtless and inquisitive, she’s cagily friendly but lets on that this is her secret swimming spot — turns a little more consequential when Marilyn (Kruger) shows up at the library in sunglasses that barely disguise a bruise.
When she all but confirms her wealthy husband’s abuse, Connor’s attraction is now mixed with a protective impulse, while a phone number pressed into his hand is all the invitation needed to start a torrid affair.
What could go wrong? For Connor, a lot, as we should expect. He’s an ex-con, for one thing — though Nicholson, who smiles a lot, looks about as jail-hardened as a mall barista — and his probation officer (a wonderfully spiky Hank Azaria, enjoying himself) seems mighty unforgiving. But for LaBute, this terrain is treacherous, too, starting with the wink-wink-groan-groan exchanges about what happens in “Postman” (not quite meta, and not interesting, either) followed by the arid, unerotic sex scenes, and the segue into murder planning that has all the nervy excitement of someone being upsold a side of fries.
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It’s hard to fault Nicholson (whose father, Jack, starred in Hollywood’s second take on “Postman,” opposite Jessica Lange) and Kruger entirely, because there are qualities in them that seem right for a “Body Heat”–adjacent yarn: starting with his believable naïveté (until it ceases to pass the smell test) and her unforced, enigmatic sultriness. But as directed, they’re mainly stiff cogs in a bored ironist’s screenplay machine, one that cheekily breaks up the action with cutesy, vague intertitles like “TWO OR THREE WEEKS LATER” and “SOMETIME AFTER THAT.”
LaBute can’t even be bothered to give his actors’ scenes anything more than the most desultory vibe, narratively or visually. In the bland Rhode Island prettiness of Walter Lloyd’s danger-free cinematography, it’s as if everyone in the movie has just come from, or is about to embark on, a refreshing afternoon stroll.
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Naturally, there’s a twist. Two, to be honest — the first one, appearing mid-murder, is genuinely intriguing, but it immediately signals what the other reveal will be, leaving a viewer’s already dampened spirits about LaBute’s intentions further diminished, not to mention feeling as if one was trapped in what might have been considered shocking in 1990. If “Out of the Blue” was an unreworked bottom-of-the-drawer screenplay from an earlier era, that might explain a lot. But the real sin of this low-wattage dud is its lack of interest in making any of this disreputably pleasurable to actually watch.
Maybe if you hate movies, LaBute’s attempt to bore us to death with classic noir material is a nifty prank. For anyone else, you’re better off revisiting Garfield and Turner, or Stanwyck and MacMurray, or Hurt and Turner — or even “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.”
“Out of the Blue” opens in theaters and on demand August 26.
