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Customer Reviews of Fall Time

Poor Title for a Good Movie
Much has been written about the homosexual nature of the two antagonists in FALL TIME, and, especially, the feminine name of one of them. To some viewers, there was not enough covert homosexual action between the two men; to others, there apparently should have been none at all. These viewers missed the point of the movie by dwelling on one aspect of it. The fifties era of marked sexual suppression dictated a mute handling of this aspect of the story, although at times that seems the only reason FALL TIME was set in the fifites: to avoid a more in-depth exploration of its themes and characters. The creators proved their thesis by crafting a film that probed its ideas no more deeply than the shallow, stagnant pool of life they apparently thought the fifties of small town life was.

Far from wading in violence and sexuality, as some viewers have suggested, FALL TIME underscores its erotic moments and shows only enough violence to prove that the robbers were not the "Hollywood" bad guys that the boys were pretending to be. Viewers who flinch from its violence share the same expectations as the teenagers appeared to in the film. The film, at times, played with the audience's expectations: one youth was hung, but, no, the beam breaks, and the boys lives--only to be shot a few minutes later. One boy gets loose, and a struggle for the gun finds one of the youths squaring off with the bank robber, who torments him to shoot by slamming his buddy's head against the wall. Another moment we have been expecting: when the bank robber says the boy will not shoot but he does. But just when the boy finds the courage to kill we are expecting, he is shot by the other bank robber. Two of the three boys end up dead in the particularly good ending, with the third shot up and in a state of shock. He has robbed a bank, seen his friends murdered, and killed a man. He has had a busy day. The supposed "innocence" of the witness balances off the true lack of it in the leading character. The actors were excellent, making the somewhat contrived plot idea--that the bank robbers would pull a job at the same time the boys were pulling their "monkey romp," and that the robber and the boy would be dressed alike and thus mistakened for one another--believable. The three young actors were particularly good, but they had no sense of what fifties' youth were all about, seeming more like eighties' or nineties' youths thrust back into an earlier time.

It was this lack of a sense of period, time, or place that kept the film from being what it could have been, just as it was its deft handling of the loss of innocence theme that kept it from being the predictable thriller exploitation film of sadists tormenting innocence it almost was. It could very well have been set in the thirties or sixties or almost any other period of time. Apparently, the film took place in Minnesota or Michigan, but the accents and the overall ambience were Southern, with a police officer telling the boy he was speeding out of town faster than a "[...] leaving Little Rock." The movie had an absurd sense of what the late fifties were, with characters, costumes, and hair styles of another (sometimes earlier, sometimes later) period of time. The boys dressed for their heist in a "Blues Brothers" look that suggested the early sixties, with thin ties and tailored slacks that were hardly the look of the late fifites. The title, an obvious reference to the fall from innocence of the main character, highlighted the main point of the movie, but the loss of innocence motif at times seemed the English class "thesis" to add respectability to what otherwise would have been a routine dabble into sadism. A film that had the makings of a truly great film came off as only a good one due to its sloppy sense of feeling for place, time, and people.

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Don't 'Fall' for this one
Teenagers plan a mock crime for kicks on the same day criminals knock off a bank for real and their paths cross. I can understand implying that two ex-cons have or had a homosexual relationship but to lace an entire movie with cheap double-entendre and to stoop so low as to give a lead male character a female first name is a trifle ridiculous (OK, director we 'get it' all men are secretly gay! You made your point, move on!) I can't even imagine that a person of same gender orientation could possibly find this film the least bit interesting much less stimulating. (for an intelligent crime caper with a same-sex subplot see "Bound") Since this movie is supposed to take place in Wisconsin they give the locals a Southern accent. An absolute bore.

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Quite film with interesting performances
The best thing about Fall Time is watching actors in their "before they were stars" period. Baldwin and Arquette are good in their roles. Baldwin particulaly impressed me the most showing that he was a talent to be seen and later enjoyed in such movies as Hula Moon. Rourke is equally fine and proves once again that he is the most natural and gifted actor of his generation. No one can show greater inner pain than Rourke