Five Corners is a film directed by Tony Bill, but written by John Patrick Shanley. Bill was an actor turned director/producer—he was in Shampoo, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Heartbeat and lots of TV. Shanley wrote Moonstruck the same year, and later directed Doubt. The film has a very Coen Brothers feel, with a sightly surreal aspect. In a weird way it fits the gap between The Wanderers and Inside Llewellyn Davis.
Released by Handmade Films, Five Corners is set in the early ‘60s in the Bronx, where a teacher has just been shot with an arrow. That’s the surreal start—and then up pops Heinz, a psychotic young man played by John Turturro, who once attempted to rape a neighbourhood girl called Linda (Jodie Foster). There’s quite a few stories going on, but the main one involves Heinz trying to seek out Linda again after his release from prison, which of course means she needs protection. She has ditched her boyfriend and is trying to get in touch with a young radical, Harry (Tim Robbins), who helped keep her safe in the past. However, Harry is planning to go to Mississippi for the “Freedom Summer” civil rights protests, and has taken his non-violent principles to heart, so he might not be the best protector.
At the same time, two young ladies in the neighborhood have ended up stuck with a pair of teenage boys who were students of the murdered teacher. There’s a twist involving them at the end. It’s about that time in the early 60s when everything is changing. It’s quirky to some extent, with a fable-ish feel.
Five Corners was Turturro’s first major film role following a string of bit parts including memorable turns in The Color of Money and To Live and Die in L.A. He’d also been doing off-Broadway and experimental theatre, but here is where he got a chance to be the main antagonist. He’s a guy who can play anything, and in Five Corners he’s totally terrifying.
It’s also an early dramatic role for Robbins, who then was known on screen as that tall doofus actor seen mainly in comic parts. It wasn’t really until Jacob’s Ladder that Robbins got noticed as a serious actor beyond his stage work, and his career soon shifted. He’s quite good here. It’s one of the last films before Jodie Foster played younger than her actual age, coming right before The Accused, which changed her image a bit.
It has an interesting atmosphere and a good ensemble cast, adding up to an odd, quirky movie. If the Coens had made a made-for-TV movie in the 80s and didn’t get final cut, this would be the offbeat result, with a lot of weird left turns. Not all of them totally work, but enough of them do to keep the pace going. Turturro owns the movie, with a real knock-out performance. He’s so memorable—vulnerable and menacing at the same time—that viewers must have wanted to know who that was straight away. It worked out well for him too, because Spike Lee saw it and grabbed him for Do the Right Thing. After that, he could pick and choose. There’s a touch of American Graffiti, a lot about the civil rights era thrown in, but if you can get with its schizophrenic nature, you’ll enjoy it and there are penguins.
Handmade was trying to break into the US market at the time with a couple of more America-centric movies. It had already had two huge successes with Life of Brian and Time Bandits, and began to court Hollywood with films like Mona Lisa, which was a big arthouse success. Instead, they had a string of flops that included Track 29, Shanghai Surprise and Five Corners. Up until Shanghai Surprise they had at least always brought films in on a low budget, and that one in theory should have been a smash hot but wasn’t. Even things like How to Get Ahead in Advertising, which people love now, was a disaster (in fact, Withnail and I was not the hit people think it was). That may be part of the reason that Five Corners was almost forgotten—there have even been quite a few bootleg budget DVDs over the years, and some people even thought it had fallen into the public domain.
Which is why it’s great to see a nice new Blu-Ray from Signal One Entertainment, which should prevent it from falling into obscurity. There was an Anchor Bay DVD in the UK, where Handmade kept the rights issue cleared up. It includes a commentary from the late film historian Mike McPadden and Ben Reiser, plus a stills gallery.
★★★½
Ian Schultz
psychotroniccinema.com 