Travolta 'Gets Shorty', oozing his legendary cool

By Parvathi Nayar Narayan

JAKARTA (JP): Throw a fish with teeth -- of the loan shark variety -- into a pool of make believe pretenders -- of the Hollywood variety -- and watch the fun unfold in Barry Sonnenfeld's Get Shorty.

Miami debt collector Chili Palmer (John Travolta) comes to Los Angeles in search of absconding dry cleaner Leo (David Paymer) who owes Palmer's employers money. As a favor promised en route, Chili Palmer breaks into actress Karen Flores' (Rene Russo) home where B-movie producer Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman) is spending the night.

Flores' acting repertoire may have only consisted of bloodcurdling screams, and Zimm's magnum opuses have largely explored slime creatures, mutants and maniacs, but movie obsessed Palmer is impressed. With his unqualified admiration for all things Hollywood, he sees the pair as the genuine article and a ticket to becoming part of their world as a movie producer.

Palmer pitches a story idea based on his pursuit of Paymer. As Zimm points out, the story needs a middle, an ending, a female interest and a sympathetic protagonist. Palmer more than ably provides these. He gets involved with Zimm's life and movie scripts, sundry hoods and racketeers, an ex-stuntman and a drug bust. Along the way he gets the girl, and yes, he gets "shorty" too -- Martin "Shorty" Weir (Danny De Vito). The posturing Weir, full of himself and pretentious Hollywood speak, is the current tinsel town darling. His presence in Palmer's film lends it the weight needed to convert a pipe dream into movie fact.

The complex storyline draws on a host of supporting players, each providing a piece of the puzzle. Most notably, there is the suave Bo Catlett (Delroy Lindo), also a believer in the adage there ain't no business like show bizniz, and whose interests come into direct conflict with the Palmer's. Others include Ray "Bones" Borboni (Dennis Farina) and Bear (James Gandolfini). The complex threads come together, and barring the exception of the ubiquitous Colombians, they are all satisfyingly tied up.

Travolta, who went from being the man with the moves in the 1970s to embarrassing irrelevance in the 1980s, can't seem to put a foot wrong these days. The star of Saturday Night Fever came into his own again with Pulp Fiction; Tony Manero grown up and into his new avatar of Vincent Vega. He made for an unlikely yet compelling small time gangster -- a curious amalgam of the seemingly dangerous, cold-blooded hood walking down the meaner streets of life, with the punk-philosopher gifted with the absence of malice and a shy smile.

Pulp Fiction's Vega had a certain edge that Chili Palmer lacks, being a more mainstream sort of character. Palmer may beat up Bear, the ex-stuntman on the side of the baddies, but is genuinely solicitous afterwards because of Bear's time in the movies. Palmer is addicted to the cinema, not cocaine, and as for his debt collecting profession, "I was never that into it," he explains.

Travolta has charisma and screen presence. Get Shorty is Chili Palmer's movie; he owns it, the others only rent space from him, no matter how competently.

Get Shorty is based on the more acerbic and hard hitting best seller of the same name by Elmore Leonard, but is reasonably faithful to the book. Hollywood's passion for gangsters is legendary -- take a quick review of the movies to hit Jakarta recently, Casino, Heat, Broken Arrow. Get Shorty, though, offers an interesting role reversal, a chronicle of the gangsters passion for the movie business.

The movie owes a lot to the detailed, dead pan and often inconsequential dialog taken from Leonard's original novel. Apparently this was largely at the instance of Travolta, who upon an initial reading of the script demanded that the original dialog be restored.

There is very little grit -- despite the guns and bullets this is a gently satirical movie. Get Shorty is missing some big moments and huge climaxes, but the film's strength is a sustained string of small humorous moments, never allowing the story to pall or drag. It is a brand of humor that comes, not from witty repartee or slapstick action, but rather from the core of the characters and the situation.

Get Shorty is a wry look at the intersection of two kinds of self-obsessed mania -- movies and mobsters. At their center is Chili Palmer who sees nothing incongruous in wanting to cross over from one into the other, for he is utterly and quietly confident of his ability to be whatever he wants to become. The movie poster announces, "Attitude plays a part"; Travolta's Chili Palmer wears his with panache.