Searchers 2.0

[Frogacuda]

Ever since I first saw Repo Man as a teenager, I've been fascinated by writer/director Alex Cox. Still Every bit the rebel that his punk image would have you think, he's one of those guys that studios love to hate. His scripts are full of unsympathetic anti-heroes, anti-corporate and sometimes anti-Hollywood undercurrents and just enough surrealism to perplex the average American. Over the last 25 years, Cox has written more than forty screenplays, and of those, less than a half dozen have actually been produced as feature films.

Apparently weary of the frustrations that come from being accountable to financiers, Cox has decided to produce his latest film as a true independent micro-feature, with a three-man crew, a cheap digital video camera, and barely-there budget. The lack of resources might be a constraint for some, but for Alex Cox, it's an opportunity to make a movie his way.

From the title, one might surmise Searchers 2.0 is some sort of modern re-imagining of the classic John Wayne vehicle. While the title is, indeed, a reference to that vintage cowboys and Indians epic, this story has no connection to that beyond a love for old westerns shared by the two main characters.

Searchers 2.0 tells the story of two small-time Hollywood actors, Mel (Del Zamora) and Fred (Ed Pansullo), who discover they shared a traumatic childhood experience on the set of a Billy the Kid movie, where they were savagely beaten and whipped by the screenwriter, Fritz Frobisher (Sy Richardson). Neither has a working car, so they decide to con Mel's daughter (Jaclyn Jonet) into driving them from Los Angeles to Arizona in their quest for justice.

Along the way, Fred and Mel wrestle with ideas of revenge, virtue, and justice by way of old movies. The dialog is very much the star of this feature, and it's the first film since Repo Man where Cox has had the opportunity to flex that same kind of off-beat sense of humor. Sometimes aggressively anti-naturalistic, characters will slip into soliloquy in the middle of a scene. Pansullo delivers a brilliant performance in a nervously intense mode that vaguely evokes William H. Macy in Fargo.

The threadbare production values are the biggest mark on the film. While the shots are nicely framed, and the direction is confident, the video quality is uneven, there are some dirty editing cuts, and even some minor video errors that lend a very homemade look. But the most noticeable vestige of the rushed production schedule may have been for the better. There is one scene, late in the film, where the desert is covered in snow. This is never explained, and in truth, it only happened because it snowed that day and they couldn't reschedule, but Monument Valley covered in snow is a striking image, and a wonderfully surreal touch that seems perfectly appropriate in the scene.

Searchers 2.0 is an odd sort of film to come from a director with 25 years of experience, but that might be why it's so able to capture the playful creativity that launched Cox's career in the first place. After all, it certainly wasn't believability or special effects that made Repo Man the cult classic that is. It was the memorable dialog, characters, and a crazy, improbable story that culminated in an unforgettable ending. In this way, Searchers 2.0 is a perfect film for those who just want to see Alex Cox do his thing.