Dolan's Cadillac (2009)

 


One thing Stephen King did to both help upcoming filmmakers and encourage many of his stories to be made into movies is sell the rights to a good number of them for a dollar.  For someone making a short student film this meant a starting point to adapt the story to their own needs without breaking the budget and, for King, it meant a steady stream of his movies available in the theaters and cable as well as on video and, later, DVD.  While much of that output is low budget, amateurish and sometimes outright horrid, it meant that studios with money to put behind many of the professional adaptations were more willing to do so.

Dolan's Cadillac was a novella first printed in Castle Rock magazine in 1985 and later released in the collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes in 1993.  It is a crime story rather than his usual horror although it does pay homage to Edgar Allen Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado", something the film emphasizes more than the story.  It is quite memorable, particularly for the way the protagonist takes revenge, and it fit with the early '90s transition King made out of being strictly a genre writer.  It has always been one I liked but, true to form for the typical dollar story, the film is quite lacking.

Robinson (Wes Bentley) and his wife Elizabeth (Emmanuelle Vaugier) are teachers in Las Vegas, somehow living the good life on teachers' salaries.  One day while horseback riding Elizabeth witnesses a drop-off of illegal aliens that results in disaster, with a man named Dolan (Christian Slater) arriving and pretty much killing everyone on site.  He tries to frighten her off from testifying, but the couple begins working with a federal law enforcement officer (Al Sapienza) to bring Dolan down, which results her being silenced permanently.

Robinson goes into a tailspin, plotting revenge while obsessing over Dolan.  After a violent encounter with his target he begins to formulate a plan to do away with the crime lord whose main business is human trafficking, bringing in women from around the world to work in the sex trade.  He joins a road crew, learning the trade while plotting an elaborate final resting place for Dolan. 

The sound design on this is horrid, with most of the A&R compressed into dull roars, and there are too many digital shots from inside vehicles as they fake driving.  Director Jeff Beesley also seems to revel in using the yellow filter unimaginative directors use for Mexico for the scenes that take place in the Mojave Desert.  As for Slater, whose own issues have forced him out of the limelight for decades, it is apparent that Beesley didn't direct him as much as just let him go.  Wes Bentley is decent at portraying Robinson's descent, but how much of it was acting is questionable as Bentley was going through a heavy drug addiction at the point and took the role for the paycheck.

Despite the fact that production levels are sub-par and on the same level as some early direct-to-video releases, the times when it is Bentley and Slater playing off of each other work.  This would have been a better short film than stretching it out to include the entire story about human trafficking which was added by screenwriter Richard Dooling.  It just gives Slater an excuse to hang out with scantily clad women while overacting

Dolan's Cadillac (2009)
Time: 89 minutes
Starring: Wes Bentley, Christian Slater, Emmanuelle Vaugier
Director: Jeff Beesley

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