WONDERLAND

Year Released: 2003 MPAA Rating: R 106 minutes In the opening of Wonderland, a shaking, sobbing teenager named Dawn Schiller (played by Kate Bosworth) is jonesing on a crud-caked curb. A dogooder named Sally Hansen (played by Carrie Fisher) picks up the strung-out girl, transports her to the saintly sanctuary of her million-plus Valley digs, far removed from Hollywoods mean streets. Oddly, this caring womans sense of crisis intervention doesnt fit Dawn Schillers notion of rescue.

But, moments later, when a Chevy muscle car screams to a halt outside Hansens, and Johnny the Wadd Holmes played by Val Kilmer jumps out, Dawns instantly revived. Holmes slings a briefcase like a doctors bag. Laying siege to the upstairs bathroom, Johnny breaks open a mountain of cocaine, dismantles the mirror from its cabinet, and in no time forges several snaky lines on its surface. Noisily inhaling with his ecstatic girlfriend, they rhapsodize about the score. Then, in celebration, the king straddles Schiller on the sink, sinking his legendary member right between the girls inviting thighs. The outraged, intensely religious Hansen bangs open the door, screaming at top volume. The two cokehead lovers make their getaway. This is how Dawn likes her rescues. I lived in the Hollywood flatlands, near the notoriously gruesome quadruple bludgeoning deaths of Ronald Launius, William Deverell, Barbara Richardson, and Joy Miller occurred. The quadruple murder on Wonderland Avenue with its drooping oaks and eucalyptus went down a block away from Governor Jerry Browns old digs. Robert Stewart, the L.A. Times Metro Section journalist assigned the crime spree, would luxuriate in all the salacious, investigatory details. A few blocks away, you could find Eddie Nashs Kit Kat Club chocked with Triple-D strippers offering to take you home - their Gucci bags stuffed with roca and 9mms. The Lebanese-born Palestinian immigrant, originally named Adel Nasrallah, was the biggest and most notorious owner of strip clubs in Los Angeles. I was employed by a Jewish Iranian movie maven high on the coolindex. When you watch Wonderland, you feel like youre on some paleontological expedition. Yet, thanks to James Coxs considered and adept direction, a cast and script that never cheats the experience or realism of Hollywoods labyrinthine underbelly the Wonderland murders are de-petrified. Shed of the preconceptions or expectations, youre consumed by the dark, perverse, and sinematic powers.The movie opens, ablaze with speedy, coked-up energy, but John Holmes stud career was already spent. The Wadd partied with a gang of trash-talking needle-dancers and ex-cons, living in the Hollywood Hills, pulsating with the antediluvian scenesters, Middle Eastern ballers, and fill-in girls. At a shindig, the motley crews blond and bearded leader, Ronald Launius, casually

orders the Wadd to show some fill-in girls his legendary thing. Holmes, a loser sycophant in Launius menacing presence, willingly complies. Can I touch it? asks an under-age stripper in silent amazement. Sure, says Launius without a word from Holmes. One Hollywood detective called Launius one of the coldest people Ive ever met. Actor Josh Lucas inhabits the role with unnerving precision. Launius, thug-biker David Lind, (played by Dylan McDermott), and a wired creep Billy Deverell, (Tim Blake Nelson), all in bad, bad need of a score, receive a white-hot tip from Holmes. Ever the object of derision, but always enjoying special status thanks to over 40,000 money shots, Johnny informs Lucius of the the copious stashes of heroin, coke, .38s, and ceiling-high stacks of cash harbored by Eddie the Arab Nash. Nash, and reigning Criminal Genius of Angel Citys Culo Clubland, The gang pulls off the heist, utterly humiliating the psychopathic Nash, (played by Eric Bogosion with cool aplomb), blood roaring in the Arabs ears inside his own Hollywood bang pad. Nashs bodyguard, Greg Niles (Faizon Love) suffers indignities no less disfiguring. Launius sudden booty goes a long way in soothing his fevered, coked-out brain. What happens next Nashs revenge is narrated by Wonderlands survivors. Each one, in Rashomon-like imagery, providing conflicting accounts of the murders. Youre thrown into an elaborate maze of mirrors. Your approximation of what actually happened constantly assailed by fresh revelations. As the dispassionate, world-weary Hollywood detectives interview one suspect after another, they arrive at their own competitive conclusions. Like, forensic mysticism. James Cox mixes up the real and surreal, each with their cloudy truth. There is no one truth, but multiple truths, multiple realities. Whether its the charismatic biker David Lind, Dawn Schiller, or, Johnny Wadd himself, youre made acutely aware that each individuals contaminated take on the events. For all its stylistic manipulations and virtuosity, as complex, textured, and contradictory as the film might strike you, theres no feeling what youre seeing is synthetic. Some directors love to shape and play with cinematic style to wow you, pitching fake and sublime meanings. Cox does not.What Cox

does is recognize the splintered nature of his story knowing what to shape, re-order, condense, or heighten but always with a disposition towards honoring the fragmented info. In many ways, the director is as self-effacing as Val Kilmers portrait of John Holmes. Theres nothing self-aggrandizing about it. Writing about violence in films, you often dwell on the belief in its debilitating effects, imagined or not, especially when aggression is glamorized, as if to arouse the viewer to participate in its imitation. Kilmer who swims against the current of past roles by portraying the porn king as a pathetic no-account, whining addict, pathological liar, and over-all scumbag miraculously - never loses your empathy. But its in Wonderlands bloody and brutal climax, when Johnny Wadd is forced to bludgeon Ron Launius to death, that Wonderland knocks you out.You get it, loud and clear. Your knees shake as you watch Holmes sobbing mightily as he complies with Greg Diles stone cold orders. If anyone came to this movie relishing the portrayal of murder and mayhem, he or she leaves with heightened sense of the unspeakable violation and transgression of human standards violence represents. Sure, Johnny Holmes appetite for self-destruction was bottomless. Heres one damaged soul. But when it came to inflicting pain on others, at least, he had his priorities straight. Wonderland will generate no copycat crimes. No killing sprees. The magical power of pictures is in the service of a higher power. by Robert Goethals October 4, 2003