Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Heaven & Earth (1993) - Stone's 3rd Vietnam pic proves an overreach

5/27/2023

Heaven & Earth (1993) - Stone's 3rd Vietnam pic proves an overreach

♥♥

+ 2nd Worst Movie of the Year

+ Most Expensive Flop of the Year: 28.6 mil. $ range + Worst $ Return of the Year: 0.33 times the cost

A woman caught in a red sea of apparent internal conflict and strong emotions make up this fine poster for Oliver Stone's Heaven & Earth

An idyllic country life in Vietnam is ruined first by Frenchmen and later by the American invasion, so that the woman Le becomes a prostitute. She later moves with her American soldier husband to the US to raise a family, but he suffers from PTSD.

Heaven & Earth is written, co-produced and directed by great New-Yorker filmmaker Oliver Stone (Seizure (1974)). It is based on the auto-biographical books When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (1989) and Child of War, Woman of Peace by Le Huy Hayslip, Jay Wurts and James Hayslip.

Stone wants to complete his Vietnam War portrayal on film, following Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) with a female, Vietnamese perspective on the war, but the width between the filmmaker and his subject here is too broad for the outcome to seem credible. Stone simply can't portray this meaningfully.

The film has powerful scenes, not least due Tommy Lee Jones' (Hope Springs (2012)) natural and devastating performance as a wrecked veteran, but it is over-all unfocused and over-loaded with narration. Unfortunately it belongs on the list of the weaker films by Stone.

Oliver Stone: 2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

2016 in films - according to Film Excess

Snowden (2016) - Stone's inflammatory political thriller is a powerful must-see

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps/Wall Street 2/Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (2010) - Stone's sequel is an entertaining spectacle

1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

Any Given Sunday (1999) - Stone's bloated sports epic is mostly for football fans

Nixon (1995) - Stone takes another president for a long run

1993 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

Born on the Fourth of July (1989) or, Beautiful Struggle

Watch a 5-minute clip from the film here

Cost: 33 mil. $

Box office: 5.8 mil. $ (North America only)

= Uncertain but likely a mega-flop (projected return of 0.33 times its cost)

[Heaven & Earth premiered 25 December (USA, Japan) and runs 140 minutes. Shooting took place from October 1992 - January 1993 in Vietnam, Bangkok, Thailand and in Los Angeles, California. The film opened #17 to a 379k $ first weekend in 63 theaters in North America, where it peaked a couple of weeks later at #12 with a 1.7 mil. $ weekend, grossing 5.8 mil. $ domestically. The foreign market numbers are regrettably kept under wraps. The film sold 14k tickets in Denmark, coming to approximately 124k $. A tentative projected world gross of 11 mil. $ isn't unlikely. It would make the film a mega-flop. It won a Golden Globe. Roger Ebert gave it a 3.5/4 star review, translating to 3 notches over this one. Stone returned with Natural Born Killers (1994). Jones returned in Blown Away (1994); Hiep Thi Le (Julia (2008)) in Bugis Street (1995); and Joan Chen (Wonderland (2017)) in On Deadly Ground (1994). Heaven & Earth is rotten at 43 % with a 5.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Heaven & Earth?

No comments:

Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (17-24)