Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's paean to the porno industry of the 1970s is sadly cynical, artistically cathartic, and moderately exhausting. Mark Wahlberg is very good as a disaffected, well-endowed busboy named Eddie who is recruited by an adult filmmaker to appear in skin flicks, eventually becoming the celebrated Dirk Diggler. Burt Reynolds (in a comeback performance) plays his movie-making mentor, and Julianne Moore is a sex starlet who evolves into a mother-figure. Anderson is a great visual talent, and his film is ambitious and audacious, but his attention-span is minimal (he can't seem to get a grip on the continuity, nor is he able to make the general prurience palatable through either sheer talent or chutzpah). As an actor's director, Anderson could also use some focus. He works a near-miracle with Reynolds, who received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but he doesn't get anything special out of the normally exciting Moore (she's tough to pin down here: gritty yet alluring, she puts out so much sweetly-nuanced artifice that you're not sure there's a person underneath). Don Cheadle as Buck Swope is another problem: too cool for this school, Cheadle has a hard stoniness and aloofness that keeps us distant from him at all times. At this point in his career, Wahlberg is inexperienced, yet it's not overly-obvious; he's handled in a young-dumb way that is never caricatured by Anderson (this kid Diggler is nobody's naïve hick, and all that wide-eyed stuff is thankfully passed over). There are pedantic pit-stops in the road that slow the film down to a crawl, and yet Robert Elswit's head-swimming cinematography is endlessly interesting (almost hallucinogenic). Is the picture a masterpiece? Some seem to think so, but I found Anderson far too enamored of his own ambiance. The characters themselves are interesting enough to make this world of porno-makers bracing to us--and the bitter, skeptical finish is darkly-comic instead of bold or 'shocking'--but "Boogie Nights" isn't the shattering personal experience many critics hailed it as. Then again, maybe that's just hype and that Anderson had no intention of hitting some people's nerves so hard. **1/2 from ****
Review of Boogie Nights
