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Released on: October 9, 2012.
Distributed by: Strand Releasing
Dir. by Adam Sherman
Starring: Lukas Haas, Madeline Zima, Jake Busey
Year: 2012
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The Movie:
Just when you were wondering, “Hey, why doesn't Lukas Haas get more work?†- after spotting his very brief appearance in Lincoln - here comes Crazy Eyes, a meandering attempt to define personal honesty and love in Los Angeles that features a pretty good performance by Haas.
The story here focuses primarily on Zach (Haas), a millionaire alcoholic with dozens of women on his speed-dial. He's good buddies with his coke-dealing bartender (Busey) and lives a life of booze and broads in a stereotypical douchebag manner that seems endemic to L.A. As the film begins, he's trying to find a companion for his evening, using the promise of attending a Hieronymous Bosch exhibit as his lure. He finally lands on Rebecca (Zima), an indie-movie pixie who's disturbed behavior is explained by her alcoholism and saved by the fact that her quirkiness doesn't redeem Zach by the end of the film. For some reason, Zach terms her as “Crazy Eyes†and is soon obsessed with her since she'll hang out with him but not give him any sex.
On their first date, she kisses him passionately and then slaps him. He's highly intrigued and starts hanging out with her more and more often. But as this happens things start to get worse in his personal life: His relationship with his ex-wife gets further strained, his parents (Ray Wise!) grow more concerned, a money-grubbing flirtatious friend (Tania Raymonde) becomes more and more obvious about her intentions, a psychotic ex-girlfriend won't leave him alone and his erratic behavior gets worse each scene as he gets more and more drunk. He keeps trying different things to get into Rebecca's pants - even flying her to NYC for a weekend - but still has no success. She keeps a relationship of sorts with her boyfriend but only, it seems, to keep Zach at bay. Rebecca, for her part, is an even worse mess than Zach and stays with him only as some way to pay for her alcoholic therapy.
Wandering through this story feels a bit like slogging through wet snow - it's not easy to make it through as it seems all the same and the characters are all pretty cold and unfeeling, especially toward each other. The presumed purgatory or hell summoned by the constant references to the Bosch exhibit place the characters and the story in a moralistic miasma that doesn't really seek forgiveness but, rather, some sense of restoration. But there's no balance to the storytelling getting to that point here. It just seems to take forever with repeated scenes of the same regrettable character actions just in different locations or at different times of the year.
Three things to note:
1. Best line, “You drunk-drive like a faggot...â€
2. J&B bottle gets spotted toward the end.
3. Jake Busey, masturbating and doing coke in front of his bathroom mirror.
Audio/Video/Extras:
As is typical with most Strand Releasing discs this one comes in a fine presentation. The full-screen 16:9 holds up pretty well as the film is very well shot. Blacks get a bit blocky in the night scenes but otherwise the detail holds up well. Audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 which also services the film quite well. A chapter menu, the film's theatrical trailer and trailers for other Strand titles round out the options on this disc.
The Final Word:
Crazy Eyes is an ambitious attempt at finding stable ground in a morally-neutral setting. But in seeking to explain Zach's character the film becomes too much like him, lacking emotion and just moving from debauched scene to debauched scene. There's no character arc but, at the very close, they attempt to explain that and more or less succeed in doing so. Yet the path to this conclusion leaves empty, sad lives in its wake and, thus, provides no real punch to the film's attempt at a point.
