Cady's Take:

Small time hood Bobby Cooper, played by Sean Penn, has engine trouble and must pull into Superior, Arizona to get his car fixed. The one garage near town is run by a desert rat of a mechanic-Darrell (Billy Bob Thornton) who gives more trouble than service. Bobby soon learns two rules of life in Superior from a 'blind Indian' (Jon Voight): that things are not what they seem, and nothing ever goes as planned.

Bobby is a gambler pursued by the Russian Mafia for not paying off his gambling debts. Tragedy and despair strike him at every corner and he is unable to escape from the god-forsaken and amoral pit-of-despair, a place where 'you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave'. There are repeated images of vultures showing how little sympathy this corner of Arizona has for the weak or unprepared.

In town Bobby meets some of the locals. He gets accused by a delusional hothead who calls himself TNT (Joaquin Phoenix) of trying to steal his jailbait girlfriend, Jenny (Claire Danes). He claims that Bobby is trying to 'make time' with her. Jenny is a simple-minded kid who can't understand why Patsy Cline isn't making records anymore. "She's dead," Bobby informs her. Bobby also runs into Grace McKenna (Jennifer Lopez) a devil in a red dress who invites him over to her house to hang drapes. Soon enough we come to find out that Grace is married to a man named Jake (Nick Nolte). In the tradition of films like these, Grace offers Bobby money to kill Jake, but not before Jake offers him money to kill Grace. Meanwhile, the local Sheriff (Powers Boothe) is watching Bobby like a hawk, suspicious of his motivations.

U Turn is not your average Hollywood story. There's no track toward a happy ending. Even when you think Bobby is going to be redeemed, there's reason to doubt it'll happen. Bobby Cooper is the ultimate loser. U Turn has funny moments, but is predominantly dark, troubling and violent. U-Turn is gutty, sleazy, and gritty! It is very entertaining, in a bizarre sort of way. It’s not a great film - too much time devoted to the mysterious Grace and her predictably angry husband Jake - but it is a nice change-of-pace for Stone.

With Stone as the director, half of Hollywood shows up to take part. Liv Tyler, for example, has a cameo part that requires her to walk into a bus station to buy a ticket, she doesn't utter a word but most film buffs will love to see her brief appearance anyway.

When watching this film you have to ask yourself, as Bobby does, is everyone in this town on drugs? Nevertheless, this movie was worth my $ and I love walking away from a film with a quote that lingers in my mind for days…….U-Turn left me with Bobby asking the hick-mechanic, "Darrell, 40,000 people die every day. Why aren't you one of them?"

Oh my. What can I say about “U-Turn”? It runs in endless circles that ultimately lead nowhere. The actors are all relatively unpleasant people that do not like each other and we do not like them either. It is odd in a movie littered with actors I like to not like anything at all about the movie. I have a special affection for Powers Boothe (see “Frailty” for a movie he is in that is worth seeing) and even his presence could not salve the wound left by this movie. Instead of a grand finale I got a weak fulfillment of a moment foreshadowed in the very opening scenes of the film. I enjoy ensemble pictures, especially when the cast includes such notables as Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, and Clare Danes. Unfortunately the measure of a movie is not directly related to the star power and talent of its actors; “U-Turn” makes this painfully clear.

Sean Penn is a guy with a past when he stumbles into a desert town and gets caught between a lovely young woman (Lopez) and her husband (Nolte). This storyline ends with a disgusting twist that seems unnecessary, as does almost every storyline in “U-Turn.” Everything about this movie is gratuitous from the sex to the violence, and finally the bizarre ending; an ending that resolves nothing and leaves the audience wondering why we paid for a ride that involved very little imagination. The characters were caricatures, the plot lines distorted, and the direction frenzied and unfocused. The actors did not seem to know who they were playing, with the exception of Sean Penn whose sense of character is too strong to ever turn in a truly unconvincing performance. However with nothing keeping me rooted to the characters or their fates, I found “U-Turn” to be a disappointing effort.