'R Xmas (2001)

I spent a significant amount of 'R Xmas's runtime trying to unravel what this was supposed to be. There's nothing inherently wrong with a movie refusing to adhere to the conventions of any one genre, but it's the kind of gamble that either pays off or falls flat. This one didn't pay off. Instead of building on various tropes to construct a film greater than the sum of its parts, this wound up landing in a sort of empty void between genres: not suspenseful enough to work as thriller, lacking characters interesting enough to function as a crime story or gangster flick, no real mystery coalescing around the bizarre events until we receive a logical if unsatisfying explanation... it's bizarre. In the end, this winds up feeling more like an odd drama masquerading as the genres above, and the drama here just isn't all that compelling. The movie tries to make a point about crime and government policy, but there wasn't much substance to what it was saying then and - in hindsight - the movie closes on an unintentionally comedic beat.

This was directed and co-written by Abel Ferrara, who's made several famous neo-noir, crime, and exploitation films I haven't seen (oops). 'R Xmas seems like it was intended as an extension of that legacy, though the consensus seems to be that this wasn't one of his better films. The movie stars Drea de Matteo and Lillo Brancato, credited as "The Wife" and "The Husband" respectively. Ice-T also appears as "The Kidnapper," though he's used so sparingly (and several times in the same set), I'm guessing they had access to the famous rapper/actor for a day or so and possibly wrote or rewrote a portion of the movie around that limitation. If that's not the case, I suggest the filmmakers keep it to themselves, as it makes for a good excuse.

Following some intro text (more on this later), the movie starts by establishing a few things, beginning with the season. It's New York, it's just before Christmas 1993, and The Husband and The Wife are parents of a girl they love very much. For a few scenes, they're portrayed as a normal upper-middle class couple. They live in a nice apartment, they send their daughter to a private school, they help less-successful family and friends with money, and so on. They could be anyone (hence the lack of names).

But eventually we get to the twist: their money comes from drugs. The Husband, in particular, manages the distribution of heroin with the help of relatives and a network of dealers. The point of all this is that they don't fit the typical TV or movie mold of mobsters or criminals (though the movie isn't above having their dialogue shift into the usual racist slurs to code itself as gritty and thus realistic). But for the most part, we're meant to see them as typical entrepreneurs trying to live the American dream.

This all goes on longer than it had to considering little of consequence occurs until The Husband is abducted and The Wife is confronted by one of the Kidnappers (Ice-T), who demands money in exchange for The Husband's return. She gathers what she can in the timespan she's given, he tells her it isn't enough, lather rinse repeat.

I should note their interactions are exceedingly weird. While he's dismissive of her husband, he seems oddly concerned about her. Not necessarily romantically, so much as just... concerned. At various times, he all but suggests she walk away rather than try to pay them off. He also demands oddly personal information: why she cares about her husband, why she's willing to live the life she's chosen, why she hasn't made him quit.... He's trying to steal the money they made selling drugs (and eventually takes the drugs as well), but he's also angry The Husband is bringing drugs into the city. The movie makes it clear she finds all this weird, as well. She keeps explaining that she loves her husband, as does their daughter.

These interactions are set between extended sequences of her going to her husband's associates for money, searching their apartment, and so on. It's supposed to be tense and frightening, but the lack of depth to the characters, coupled with the weirdness surrounding the kidnappers, make it difficult to take seriously. So rather than building suspense, all this drags out while we wait to see how it will resolve.

Like everything else, that turns out to be underwhelming. The Husband just reappears for Christmas. The kidnappers released him after he figured out they were mainly after some money and drugs an associate left with him. Once they had that, they let him go rather than kill him.

The ordeal leaves The Husband wanting a new career, but it gradually becomes apparent there's nothing else he can do that wouldn't involve sacrificing the life they've built. They don't want to be doing this, but they're stuck.

Meanwhile, the news reveals a group of corrupt cops have been arrested and indicted. The Husband and Wife see this on the news and recognize the Kidnapper. While this does explain the Kidnapper's odd behavior, the reveal just kind of lands with a thud. It's not all that surprising (the movie already implied he was a cop), and while it means the whole thing was thought out, it doesn't make any of it interesting.

The movie closes with some text bookending the opening, which I should finally get to. At the beginning, the movie establishes, "In December of 1993 the Honorable David Dinkins was completing his first and only term as Mayor of New York." The very end features this text: "Less than one month later Rudolph Giuliani is sworn in as the 107th Mayor of New York City. To be cont..."

What they were going for was a sense of the ongoing inadequacy of government to address issues surrounding crime and drug use, in part because the system isn't equipped to confront the incentives for criminal activity to continue. Instead, it's locked in a cycle which will continue with the new year, as with the old. That's almost certainly one of the reasons this was set at Christmas.

That's what they were going for, but... uh... that's not what they got. This came in the early 2000s (it played in film festivals in 2001, but wouldn't get a DVD release for a few years), when the image of New York City in media underwent a major transformation. In the late 90s, the city was still commonly portrayed as a drug-ridden haven of crime, despite the fact that image was already outdated in the increasingly Disneyfied metropolis. But after September 2001, the city became a symbol of resilience, with Giuliani a figurehead of that transformation.

Of course, this isn't 1993 or 2001, so now Rudy Giuliani is more remembered as the guy with a cameo in the second Borat movie. His part in the debacle that was the first Trump administration overshadows his role as mayor - seeing his name invoked in any capacity brings to mind an immense amount of baggage.

Is that unfair to the movie, which was made before any of this? Actually, in this case I kind of think it's fair. And the reason it's fair is because this is resting its themes, tone, and narrative, on crime statistics that were anachronistic when it was released. While it's set in the mid 90s, the movie implies the future is still be written, which ignores the drop in crime that was already underway. My reading of the ending (and movie as a whole) hinges on the idea it's supposed to be relevant, and that's just not the case. So if we're meant to accept the fantasy world where New York is still overrun by crime, I'm not giving them a pass because history wasn't kind to their cultural references.

Moving on. Or perhaps moving back to Christmas, since there's quite a bit more there to explore. Despite the movie's dark tone (or perhaps because of it), the holidays are featured heavily. I mentioned their role in the cyclical nature of time, but this is leveraging them in other ways, as well. The holidays as a time for family is a key component here, both as a normalizing factor and to draw attention to the seeming dissonance between drug dealers (or more accurately the overly simplified image of drug dealers typically portrayed in media) trying to buy hard-to-find gifts for children, attending parties, and behaving charitably towards loved ones.

Contrast is also apparent in the way the movie cuts from gritty, disturbing elements to typical celebrations. There's a particularly obvious example where we cut from kidnappers beating The Husband to a sequence of his daughter surrounded by decorations, but there are more subtle applications throughout. There's also a great deal of holiday music played - as the title suggests, this wants to be a Christmas movie, as well as a crime drama.

Towards the end, there's also a slight hint of holiday magic when The Husband quite literally seems to reappear on Christmas morning. It all feels dreamlike, not dissimilar to something from The Nutcracker (or any other Christmas fantasy). Unfortunately, in practice the movie's failure to build goodwill towards its leads or story made this more jarring than effective, though I like the underlying idea.

The holidays are also used briefly a couple times in what I'm assuming was a sort of nod to the director's past in exploitation. As a whole, 'R Xmas is staged and shot to feel highly realistic. It wants to feel like it's set in our world, that the events could have happened or be happening in real time... but there are a couple exceptions in the form of hypersexualized moments that feel like they drifted over from a different, far less serious film. The two I noticed were a helper to a department store Santa wearing far less than seems plausible for the job and a satirized Barbie analog called "Party Girl". In both cases, the movie downplays the absurdity, almost leaving you with the impression you've noticed an Easter Egg. Make of that what you will.

Then, obviously, there's the title of the movie. A little too cute for the tone and subject matter, in my opinion, but bad titles don't ruin good movies, good titles don't save bad ones, and I don't think this is a good title or a good movie, so... no harm, no foul on that accord.

That said, some of the ways the holidays are utilized is interesting when removed from context. It's that context that kills this, though: the movie just isn't interesting or engaging. It drags more or less start to finish, and while some of the points it's making surrounding the humanity of those "on the wrong side of the law" have merit, the movie's larger message was dated before it even reached a large audience.

In short, there just aren't enough reasons to bother with this.