Nick of Time
With Johnny Depp, Christopher Walken, Charles S. Dutton, Peter Strauss, Roma Maffia, Gloria Reuben, Marsha Mason, and Courtney Chase.
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The events in Nick of Time hinge on a kidnapping, but we know the victim’s life is at risk only because her kidnapping advances the plot–though admittedly that plot has a logical coherence lacking in many thrillers. After attending the funeral of his wife, accountant Gene Watson (Johnny Depp) arrives in Los Angeles with his young daughter (Courtney Chase) for a business meeting. She’s kidnapped by “Mr. Smith” and “Ms. Jones” (Christopher Walken and Roma Maffia), who will kill her unless Watson assassinates the newly elected governor (Marsha Mason), who refuses to return the favors of the corrupt special-interest groups that got her elected. Watson is given until 1:30 PM, an hour and a half after the kidnapping, to get the ransom–to pay for his daughter’s life with the life of the governor.
Badham fails to ask the same question. Gene Watson’s daughter in Nick of Time might as well be a dog: she’s cute but she’s just a device. And Depp, with his smooth, masklike skin, untouched by gravity, never betrays the desperation or sadness he should. After falling 30 feet into a fountain, he emerges looking as if he’s just done a GQ layout. Walken is also miscast. All his performances have an edgy undertone, an element of danger that adds depth to cardboard heroes. But the same qualities make him a predictable villain. He’s asked to exaggerate his edginess, to push it to the fore, where it becomes obvious and uninteresting. In Walken’s least convincing performances as villains (The Milagro Beanfield War and A View to a Kill), the subtext has become the text.
Fortunately Badham takes his work more seriously than De Palma does his, and therefore Nick of Time isn’t smug. But there’s nothing more at stake here than whether or not the movie will be “entertaining,” and superficial, mechanically adept entertainment is never enough. What genuinely entertains us is ourselves–if we don’t recognize ourselves, if we cannot place ourselves somewhere in the story, then the events on-screen are nothing. They have no relation to what’s important–you and me.
