Cinema Veritas

Down By Law

written and directed by Jim Jarmusch

The Harvard Square Theatre

AFTER SEVEN DECADES of feature film-making, this year's films--Peggy Sue Got Married, The Fly, Top Gun--are pretty good evidence that Hollywood has just about run out of plots. With almost every storyline done two or three times over, directors have to find something else--cinematography, special effects, acting--to distinguish their movies from the competition.

Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law is one of the better examples of what can be done without a real plot. His movie does have a story of sorts: two New Orleans hipsters are set up by their shifty friends, end up in a cell together and, with the help of a homicidal Italian with bad English, they escape.

The plotline is so secondary to the action that Jarmusch doesn't even bother to explain how the threesome escapes from their swamp-bound prison. The setting is just a convenient way for putting three strange people in the same room for a long time, just as Jarmusch did in his first film, Stranger than Paradise. In Paradise, the long pauses and spaced-out banality of the dialogue was so odd that it quickly became funny, similar to what might happen while watching 200 laundry detergent commercials in a row. Jarmusch dishes out more of the same in Law, only with a grittier locale and better camera work and acting.

John Lurie is back from Paradise as the lowgrade lowlife Jack, a man so cool he is almost dead. Singer Tom Waites gives an outstanding film debut as the alcoholic Zack, a washed out Wolfman Jack with a Valium temperment. Robertc Benigni starts out as a Chico Marx knock-off with a fondness for "famous American poet Bob Frost," but his character grows into the most capable and sympathetic of the trio, winning the hearts of both the audience and the beautiful Nicoletta (Nicoletta Braschi).

Down By Law is a collage of the bizarre tics of urban life, where the chant "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream" can become a cry of rebellion, and a rabbit-on-a-stick a conciliatory gift. But all this calculated oddness aside, how can you not love a director who puts someone named "Rockets Redglare" in the cast?