Retro Film Review: Equinox (1992)

Stories about identical twins separated at birth provide excellent comedy material for millennia. However, when it comes to drama or similar material of serious nature, results are usually much worse. One of such examples is Equinox, 1992 drama directed by Alan Rudolph.

Two twins (played by Matthew Modine in dual role) are Freddy Ace, hit man and enforcer working for the mob boss Mr. Paris (played by Fred Ward), and Tony Petosa, humble car mechanic who works in the garage by his adopted father Pete (played by M. Emmet Walsh). Two twins don't know about each other and live completely different lives - Freddy is arrogant gangster with rich apartment and trophy wife Sharon (played by Lori Singer) who dreams about becoming boss, while shy Tony has problems in the relationship with his girlfriend Beverly Frank (played by Lara Flynn Boyle). Connection between the two is discovered by morgue attendant and wannabe writer Sonya Kirk (played by Tyra Farrell) who is convinced that the twins are actually illegitimate children of European aristocrat and set to inherit great fortune.

While majority of the filmmakers tends to treat audience like idiots, Alan Rudolph goes to the other extreme. At least this is the case in this film with plot and characters understandable only to people with superhuman intelligence or those ready to spend entire lifetime trying to decipher its meaning. Equinox features plenty of bizarre characters, some interesting scenes and situations, but only few of them are actually connected to each other or make any sense. This problem is alleviated by bad acting, especially by Matthew Modine whose uninspired performance creates a lot of confusion in the beginning, since the audience isn't aware that he actually plays two different characters. Other characters are either not necessary or not fleshed out, and because of that Equinox is hardly anything else than overpretentious "artsy" failure of movie.

RATING: 2/10 (-)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on October 4th 2000)

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