American Perfekt

Stealing a trick from Luke Rhinehart's cult novel The Dice Man, this has Forster bestowing his fate on the flip of a silver dollar. He's a doctor zigzagging across the Midwest - heads left, tails right. Bumping into Plummer's neurotic Sandra in the middle of the desert, and, taking her under his supposedly protective wing, the good doc probably isn't the answer she's looking for. Things get more intense when they run up against Thewlis's roadhog, Ernest Santini, an English magician and smalltime con operator. Then it falls apart... There's probably a great movie to be made according to the rules of chance, but this ain't it. After an intriguing first act, writer/director Chart gets confused by his own sleight of hand and winds up in banal serial-killer thriller territory. but at least he has an eye for casting. Forster's weary grace is every bit as appealing here as in Jackie Brown, and his subtle style is an effective counterpoint to Thewlis's manic energy and the neurotic tics of Plummer and Balk (eminently credible as Sandra's sister, Alice).