Snakeskin (2001)

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This New Zealand product slowly grabs you. Alice(Melanie Lynskey...Rose on Two and a Half Men)is a young women who craves excitement. She admires most all things American; you know...threat of danger, drugs, sex and in her mind anything resembling a cheap thrill. Her bedroom walls are covered with photos of James Dean and Elvis. She also has a fetish for snakeskin boots. Her ideal weekend is going with platonic friend Craig(Dean O'Gorman), who wants to be called Johnny because it is sexier, hitting the highway and picking up strangers. With each stranger there is the chance of adventure. Johnny being in love with Alice would go to the ends of the earth for her. What Alice wants...Alice usually gets. When these two adventurers pick up an American hitchhiker Seth(Boyd Kestner), the road trip becomes a thrill ride. Seth appears to be a rough cowboy packing a gun and wearing snakeskin boots; and he is trying to hide the fact he is running from drug dealers, who he robbed...he has their product and their money. This being known, small town Alice and Johnny become characters in the adventure of their lives. Lynskey has what it takes to carry the movie. She is vibrant and adaptable. Others in the cast: Oliver Driver, Jode Rimmer, Jacob Tomuri and Paul Glover.

Gillian Ashurst's films are generally characterised by fetishistic use of kitchy character images from sci-fi, the wild west and 1950s pin-ups. It's anchoring, but can come across as objectifying and seems to contribute to a lack of plot.Snakeskin does not entirely diverge from the kitchy character theme but definitely has a tight plot with good momentum. The main characters are believably drawn, although they're not particularly likeable.The acting in Snakeskin varies. Oliver Driver is brilliant in a challenging role as a skinhead. Melanie Lynskey tends to overact somewhat, and Dean O'Gorman at his best, although this is not saying much. The "comic relief" characters, the local ice-cream van drug vendors, are both annoying and extraneous to the plot.There are some very well executed sequences and ideas, for example the grief caused to a family by a fatal car crash, the CGI section when one of the characters is tripping on LSD and a tender moment shared between a skinhead and women's underwear. These snipets in themselves give an idea as to the diverse tone of this film.Snakeskin is an interesting development for Ashurst as a filmmaker, and worth a watch, although more in the sense of 'fun' than 'challenging'.

I went to Snakeskin not expecting much, perhaps something along the lines of "Stickmen" a NZ version of a successful overseas production, with a focus on Kiwiana and gimmicky NZ references. Too a large degree I was not disappointed. Oliver Driver plays yet another weirdo (although this time a skin head speed freak) which he does well, however, his appearances are becoming a little too familiar. While the acting and actors are excusable the writing is not, the first half of the film is nothing particularly new but works, but, by the second half the writing is completely incoherent. At one point towards the end it seems as if too many characters have been introduced and writer/director Ashurst just gets rid of them, they walk off, get shot etc. etc.... More noticeable than their demise is the increasingly strange (dare I say quirky) mishmash of ideas thrown in to try to hold the script together as it winds down towards the end which is neither a surprise nor original. (In fact for all you B-grade film viewers, very "Tales from the crypt" type thing). The whole film is very New Zealand on the surface and should be praised for being true to "NZ", those of you who liked "Stickmen" will like this film, but for me it does not compare with "Goodbye pork pie". Go and see it if only for the landscape.

Kiwis have this really odd approach to our films. We automatically assume that if a film has come from the States, and if it's showing in Hoyts, then it's better than anything ever made in New Zealand, let alone the smelly ol' Mainland.As Snakeskin aptly shows, this is damn wrong, and it's fitting that it uses the Kiwi appropriation (obsession) with the American Dream as its central theme. In fact, the characters know more about Elvis and Marrilyn ("The patron saints of America guiding us on our journey") than about the small plastic Tiki they have in their car.It's a very clever, very well directed, *excellent* film. With a kicking soundtrack. This is very important.