Rarely has Wim Wenders had a superstar like Mel Gibson to play godfather to his work.
But then it's Mel Gibson's Berlin-based company that financed this Wim Wenders film. Neither does the other much service, unfortunately, in a film that feels, sounds and looks like a back number, and a long way back, too, as far back as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, only not so penetrable and certainly not so enjoyable.
Time is surely past for films that tax our patience to and beyond the limit of mental and physical endurance with their opaque confusion of pulp-fiction Americana, posturing European auteurism, wise-fool philosophising and existential murk.
It is set in a sleazebag, downtown LA hotel that's a refuge for a dozen deadbeat clichés - Native American Geronimo (Jimmy Smits), Scouseaccented Fifth Beatle (Peter Stor-mare), lyrical sprite (Milla Jovovich), ancient wise-woman (Gloria Stuart), dope addict (Amanda Plummer), permanent inebriate (Bud Cort) and autistic savant (Jeremy Davies), each one more boring (if possible) than all the rest put together. A millionaire's son has been murdered; Mel Gibson plays a stiff-necked FBI man - literally, in a neck brace - who grills the residents about the case and their attitudes to the outside world, which is assumed to be more insane than they themselves are.
Phedon Papamichael's photography, which seems to have wings, is on the move constantly, but simply shows up the fact that nothing else is.
The film derives from an idea by U2's Bono, who conceived the notion of making a film on the roof of a hotel where the band shot a video for Where the Streets have no Name. Like much else in the pop business, it must have seemed a good idea in the braindead hours after the gig; Wenders doesn't bring any clearer head to it.
I am as ignorant about his motives at the end as I was at the beginning, only much more exhausted. Someone, perhaps, comes nearest to voicing this director's love-hate relationship with his adopted continent and native industry when he says: "Truth is whatever most people want to buy - this is Hollywood, an ounce of shit and they make a shit soufflé."
Only in this case, the soufflé has refused to rise.
Million Dollar Baby
Cert: 12A
