Catchfire (1990)
Oddball thriller in which Jodie Foster witnesses a Mafia hit and goes to the police. Mob boss Vincent Price and his main man Joe Pesci hire crack hitman Dennis Hopper to get rid of Foster before she can talk.
Rather than kill Foster, Hopper becomes infatuated with her and the two end up on the run from the mob in the desert.
Hardly conventional by thriller standards, it has strange plot twists and even stranger character development but it doesn't really bother me when it has such a fine ensemble cast on screen. Aside from Hopper, Foster, Price and Pesci we also get Dean Stockwell, Charlie Sheen, John Turturro, Fred Ward, Catherine Keener and Bob Dylan. Do they all know what they are doing? Possibly not, Ward might even be in a different movie altogether, but Catchfire is a bit of fun and has a well filmed helicopter set piece at it's bullet strewn climax.
I like this quirky piece, clearly more than Hopper the director did as he disowned it prior to release and it went out under the director pseudonym Alan Smithee.
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