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Lonely Hearts
A very special grandparent's day gift
2007
Review: April 20, 2007
Director: Todd Robinson
Starring: John Travolta, Salma Hayek, James Gandolfini, Jared Leto
It’s so boring you’d better not.
THE SETUP:
The story of the lonely hearts killers mixed with boring police procedural.
DISCUSSION:
Much has been written and said—by me—of my worship of The Honeymoon Killers, resident of my top 10 films of all time list and general all-round work of genius. So obviously I was pretty interested to see Lonely Hearts, a new film also based on the case.
What is the case? Around 1948 this guy Ray Martinez would write vulnerable women through “Lonely Hearts” magazines—essentially personals magazines—bilk them of their money, and then dump them. One of the women he dumped was obese nurse Martha Beck, but she got a hold on him somehow and they essentially went into business bilking women together, with Martha posing as Ray’s sister. Eventually they were caught and both executed at Sing-Sing. This current movie was written and directed by Todd Robinson, grandson of the lead investigator on the case. Which explains a whole hell of a lot.
We open with credits over black and white photos of crime victims mixed with color footage of a woman making a cake that says “Happy Anniversary,” leaving her wedding ring on a photo album on the table, then going to the bathroom and blowing her brains out. Next we see Travolta as Buster Robinson on his way into an execution chamber. “You don’t have to do this,” says his buddy Charles, played by James Gandolfini and, in the first of many lines that may cause you to grit your teeth, Buster responds “Yes, I do.”
We then flash back three years earlier, complete with unnecessary voice-over by Gandolfini. He introduces small-time con man Ray [Jared Leto], seen bilking a montage-worth of women. Then he meets Salma Hayek as Martha, who I thought had added 20 pounds for this role, although by the next shot she was skinnier again. Martha wants to leap right into bed with Ray, and they do, but when he abruptly leaves, she scans the paper and figures out he’s off to bilk another widow. She shows up and bails him out of a situation, and their partnership is rather unconvincingly born.
Next we see her writing letters, supposedly from him, to their next mark. One of these exchanges contains a reference to everyone’s favorite line from the first film: “Why, you’re the hottest bitch I’ve ever seen!” There’s another reference to a line along the lines of “Your brother makes me absolutely adolescent,” and I think some of the rumba music we hear at one point is the same music from the dancing sequence in Honeymoon Killers. We’ve also found out that Martha was raped by her brother from the age of 10, which proves to be all the motivation she gets for being a total loony psycho. And a psycho she is, as we find out in the next scene, where she blows Ray while he’s driving, blows the cop who pulls them over, then holds the gun to Ray’s crotch and makes him promise “Don’t you ever love them,” i.e. he can seduce the women but never fall in love.
Sounds fairly interesting, right? Well, that’s only because I haven’t mentioned that this is only 40% of the movie, and intercut with all this so far has been 60% really quite dull police bullshit with Travolta and Gandolfini and yummy Scott Caan. You see, that was Buster’s wife way back then and the first victim here was made up to look like a suicide, also in a bathtub, and so now Buster has to solve this case to set his heart to restttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt… Oh sorry, I guess I fell asleep on my keyboard there for a second.
So we start bouncing back and forth between the killers and the tedious investigation. Martha hears Ray and Alice Krige—that’s right, the Borg queen—fucking upstairs and dispatches the woman, then makes Ray prove his love by masturbating while calling her name. Then we return to the astonishingly lame father-son melodrama. Buster is afraid to let his son know that he’s in a relationship with a wasted Laura Dern [wasted in the role—I mean, not wasted like drunk wasted, though that would have added some interest], because the little tyke won’t be able for forgive him… you know, I can’t even go into it. Suffice to say it necessitates the line: “Maybe your son hasn’t cried yet because he’s waiting for you to.”
Okay, I’m not going to bother going on with the plot blow-by-blow, but for some highlights. Here Martha is furious that Ray made a woman pregnant, although she only made him promise not to love them. In the Honeymoon Killers she didn’t want him to have sex with the women at all, so the pregnancy was a real blow. There is a lot of atmospheric smoke. You must know that if you’re going to show the interior of a barn you are required to have beams of smoky sunlight shining in through the cracks. At one point Ray bursts in the door and shouts “Martha?” and based on the amount of smoke I wondered if we were to understand that the house is on fire. While in the Honeymoon Killers one of the interesting wrinkles of Ray’s character is that he shied away from violence himself, here he’s a’blowin’ away roadside coots for puppies as well as the odd police officer, and you have to wonder: where are these bodies going? The rest of the movie makes a fairly big deal about how they dispose of the bodies, so what happens to these two? Then we are treated to a child killing conveyed by the universal film language of child death: scattering birds and a shot of an unattended tricycle. Not to mention several shots of little girl panties on the line. And as we trend toward the end I have to wonder how did Martha end up crouched in the corner of the interrogation room? Perplexing questions.
The main problem this movie faces is that it is shuttling back between a fascinating and exciting true crime case and really dull police melodrama. Travolta and Gandolfini are quite good in their roles, but every time they appear on screen you sort of go “Oh, not again.” It seems a lot of this is tribute from grandson to grandfather, but you know what? Make a collage on a posterboard and put it up in the police station or something. If you’re going to make a movie for the public to see, make something the public might want to see. This shuttling back and forth robs either story of its focus or interest. We never really get much insight into the psychology of the killers, and the psychology of the policemen is so trite and cliched after a while one loses all interest.
Now, I know that this movie is not The Honeymoon Killers and is not intended as a remake. Nevertheless, here’s where I detail the many ways in which that movie was superior, so if you don’t want to hear me bellyache about it feel free to skip to the next paragraph. In HK the focus was entirely on the killers and their scams and the women who fell for them. Jared Leto was quite good here, and well-cast, but not the white-hot sex machine Tony Lo Bianco was in the first, which really went far to sell why and how they could get away with what they did. As in real life, Shirley Stoler as Martha was fat and mean, and her amazing performance went a long way toward explaining her psychology. And then there are the victims, who inspire such a queasy mix of being hilariously desperate and mockable and yet touchingly naïve. Not to mention the many electrifying murder scenes and astonishing conversations. Honeymoon Killers does not answer every question, but that is part of its strength, as you the viewer are drawn in to the characters and involved in piecing together why they act the way they do. I just read this quite long but absolutely fascinating article about the real case, and while it turns out that Lonely Hearts is much more historically accurate, to my mind it only points out how Honeymoon Killers was able to pull its material into a story that had literary coherence, vivid characters, an astonishing tone of simultaneous comedy and horror, and stunning photography. This film took its own liberties—I mean, OBVIOUSLY we cannot even LOOK at a woman who is fat!—but fails to shape its material into something compelling and that makes sense. By the way, in the quite extensive article, the Travolta character is barely mentioned but once.
When it’s done it ends up seeming like the most elaborate Grandfather’s Day card ever. And like Grandfather’s Day cards, it’s of little interest to anyone who isn’t either the grandfather or the grandson.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
No, watch the Honeymoon Killers.
RELATED MOVIES:
THE HONEYMOON KILLERS is another version of this case and is one of my top 10 favorite films of all time. Hilarious, sad, horrifying, appalling and beautifully made, if you haven'’ seen it you'’ better watch it or expect me to come out there and kick your ass.
DEEP CRIMSON is apparently a Mexican version of this same story that I have never seen, but it’s on my list now.
