FILM REVIEW; A Film Stud Who Loses His Luster Is Sent to Graze on Seedy Pastures

By A. O. SCOTT

''Wonderland,'' directed by James Cox, is part of a curious, somewhat unsavory subgenre of movies that involve washed-up, sort-of-famous people and death by bludgeoning. Recent examples include Paul Schrader's ''Auto Focus,'' in which the celebrity (and victim) was the ''Hogan's Heroes'' star Bob Crane, and Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato's ''Party Monster,'' in which the celebrity (who in real life pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter) was the New York club kid Michael Alig.

In ''Wonderland,'' which opens today in New York and Los Angeles, the celebrity (and apparent accomplice) is John Holmes, the star of many X-rated movies who died in 1988 and who was acquitted of charges in a multiple homicide in Los Angeles in 1981.

In Mr. Cox's film the particulars of the crime -- five people attacked with lead pipes in a house in Laurel Canyon, four of them fatally -- remain in some doubt, as does the extent of Holmes's responsibility. What seems indisputable is that he was mixed up in some very bad business. Played by Val Kilmer as a manic, self-pitying, self-destructive charmer next to whom Mr. Kilmer's Jim Morrison in ''The Doors'' looks like a church deacon, Holmes is a stud who has long since gone to seed.

Followed around by his patient girlfriend, Dawn (Kate Bosworth), and her pet chihuahua, he pinballs around Los Angeles County looking for drugs and finding trouble. The murder victims belong to a group of addicts and small-time dealers whose endless, hectic parties gain a certain sleazy cachet from Holmes's presence. Afraid that he is wearing out his welcome, he persuades his hosts to rip off a local nightclub owner named Eddie Nash (Eric Bogosian), and then he betrays them by helping Nash take revenge.

All of this is told through competing versions of the story related to a pair of grim-faced homicide detectives (Ted Levine and Franky G.) by Holmes and by David Lind (Dylan McDermott), a glowering ex-convict who participated in the robbery and escaped Nash's revenge. Neither Lind nor Holmes seems to be a very reliable informer or an especially admirable character, and the movie, though fascinated by the druggy, amoral milieu, holds each man at arm's length.

Mr. Cox is not really interested in the truth behind the murders or in generating sympathy for anyone touched by them. Instead he treats the episode as a chance to show off his mastery of fast-cutting, atmospheric style, which is impressive, but also a little annoying.

With its flashbacks, split-screen montages, decade-jumping soundtrack, sped-up action and frequent shifts of light and color, ''Wonderland'' feels like ''Law & Order'' on crack. At heart it is a standard cop show whodunit, with Mr. Levine and Franky G. as the dogged detectives trying to sort through the distortions and ambiguities. That is what they are paid to do of course; why anyone else should care is the real unsolved mystery.

Still, the film is absorbing without being especially affecting, partly because it assembles an impressive group of actors who seem to revel in the ambient scuzziness, including Carrie Fisher, Janeane Garofalo, Tim Blake Nelson, Faizon Love and Josh Lucas. Mr. Lucas, playing the crown prince of the Laurel Canyon drug scene, is all nerves and teeth, showing some of the same sharp-faced ferocity he brought to ''A Beautiful Mind,'' in which he played John Nash's graduate-school rival. Here, oddly enough, his rival is also named Nash.

The high quality of most of the acting makes this otherwise pointless and indulgent movie at least watchable, and Lisa Kudrow's performance in particular provides a glimpse of the better movie you wish it were. Ms. Kudrow plays Sharon Holmes, John's estranged wife, to whom he turns when things become really desperate. Their relationship is an enigma much deeper than all the grisly cop-show business: she clearly despises everything her husband has become but has never entirely abandoned him, perhaps clinging in vain to the hope that he may one day snap out of it.

All the other characters in in the movie are psychologically transparent: they are addicts and criminals motivated by need, greed and revenge, but Ms. Kudrow, looking sorrowful and severe, remains tantalizingly opaque. She seems like a real person, and you wonder how she was dragged into a situation -- and a movie -- like this.

''Wonderland'' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has nonstop drug use, frequent violence and some sex, though not as much as its main character's profession might lead one to expect.

WONDERLAND

Directed by James Cox; written by Mr. Cox, Captain Mauzner, Todd Samovitz and D. Loriston Scott; director of photography, Michael Grady; edited by Jeff McEvoy; production designer, Franco-Giacomo Carbone; produced by Holly Wiersma and Michael Paseornek; released by Lions Gate Films. Running time: 104 minutes. This film is rated R.

WITH: Val Kilmer (John Holmes), Lisa Kudrow (Sharon Holmes), Kate Bosworth (Dawn Schiller), Dylan McDermott (David Lind), Josh Lucas (Ron Launius), Tim Blake Nelson (Billy Deverell), Eric Bogosian (Eddie Nash), Ted Levine (Sam Nico), Franky G. (Louis Cruz), Christina Applegate (Susan Launius), Natasha Gregson-Wagner (Barbara Richardson), Janeane Garofalo (Joy Miller), Carrie Fisher (Sally Hansen) and Faizon Love (Greg Diles).

-- The New York Times

Orlando Weekly review

John Holmes inspired 'Boogie Nights,' but 'Wonderland' tells the real story of his involvement in drugs & murder

by Rob Blackwelder 

Part "Rashomon"-like roundelay of dubious recollections, part "Boogie Nights" flashback, "Wonderland" recounts, with drug-addled stylishness, events leading to a brutal 1981 mass-murder in the Los Angeles hills made famous by its link to washed-up, strung-out ex-porn legend John Holmes.

Starring the charismatically glazy-eyed and understated Val Kilmer as Holmes and "Blue Crush" cutie Kate Bosworth as Dawn, his newly legal, foolishly co-dependent girlfriend, this film has a big comparison hurdle to overcome -- the riveting "Boogie" was loosely based on Holmes and some of these events. But for the most part it succeeds because sophomore director James Cox (his unreleased "Highway" premiered on video last year) bypasses the self-destructive smack-head's severed sex-trade ties except as they relate to his celebrity among lowlifes who supply him with drugs.

In fact, Holmes is just one of four characters around whom Cox constructs his story from several points of view in single-perspective segments.

After establishing Holmes as a paranoid, psychologically decayed hanger-on in the Wonderland Ave. townhouse where the pipe-beating deaths will occur, the film spends one act at a police station the morning after the murders with biker thug David Lind ("The Practice's" Dylan McDermott, goateed and gruff in a outstanding departure performance), whose girlfriend was one of the victims.

Off the record, he tells his version of events: The murders were retribution for a $1.2 million home-invasion robbery masterminded by Holmes and executed by the Wonderland brood of druggie deviants. When Holmes felt shortchanged by the divvy of loot, he tipped off their victim -- a violent drug and nightclub kingpin named Eddie Nash (Eric Bogosian).

Later, when Holmes is in protective custody, we get his own take. He blames the robbery on Lind and his cronies (the superbly psychotic Josh Lucas and Tim Blake Nelson, both playing against type) and says he was forced at gunpoint to take the enraged Nash's henchmen to the Wonderland house but didn't witness the murders.

As the cops try to piece together the real story from these fibs of personal level-headedness, Holmes' long-estranged, pre-porn wife (Lisa Kudrow) is pulled into the fray from her deliberately distancing suburban existence, giving the audience (but not the cops) a version of events taking place just after the murders as she tries to take Dawn under her wing. And through Dawn's eyes we get narrative bookends of John Holmes' desperation and half-stoned gloom.

Using under-cranked cinematography and warped sound to empathize with stoned characters -- and a soundtrack of customary late-'70s-excess anthems (T.Rex's "20th Century Boy," Iggy and the Stooges' "Search and Destroy") -- "Wonderland" is frequently derivative of many other drugged-out independent films. But Cox makes it his own by tapping a unique, cyclical undercurrent that captures the nature of cocaine/heroine highs and lows in the movie's energy patterns. He also culls strong performances from a great cast that also includes Christina Applegate, Janeane Garofalo, Natasha Gregson Wagner and Carrie Fisher in small roles.

It's Kilmer, however, who makes the largest impression, ironically by being uncharacteristically low-key. He illustrates Holmes' low status with the Wonderland crowd by the fact that he barely registers in some scenes. Looking unhealthily ruddy and shaggy, he latches on to a knowing self-delusion in the demoralized ex-porn king that often abandons him, leaving sadness and crushing regret far more often than he'd like. His very best scene is one of remorseful silence as he apologetically washes a shaken Dawn in her bathtub after pimping her to Nash for drugs, with violent results.

Comparisons to "Boogie Nights," which is a more distinctive and cinematically savvy film, may be inevitable. But "Wonderland's" facts aren't trying to compete with its predecessor's fictions. This is an absorbing and adroit (if not inventive), sobering and smart movie that is worth watching on its own merits.

-- ContactMusic

PopMatters review

by Cynthia Fuchs

Liars

"John Holmes was the first porn star," begins James Cox's Wonderland. This is not exactly true, of course, as there were porn stars before and alongside Holmes, also known as Johnny B. Wadd and Big Jon Fallus, but none has achieved quite his notoriety. Most initial memories of him have to do with numbers, many of them stunning, even for a porn star taking full advantage of 1970s Hollywood: 14,000 women, 2,000 porn films, 14 inches (or 13, or 15), two wives, $3,000 a day, 50 valiums at a time, and, most horrifically, 4 brutal murders.

This last figure occasions Wonderland, a mostly strange and lurid account of the contradictory stories concerning Holmes' involvement in the 1981 Laurel Canyon murders. That is, the gruesome bludgeonings of a group of Holmes' acquaintances: drug dealer and Wonderland abode owner Ron Launius (fuzzy-faced Josh Lucas), his slow-minded buddy Billy Deverell (Tim Blake Nelson), Joy Miller (Janeane Garofalo), and bystander Barbara Richardson (Natasha Gregson Wagner). Ron's wife Susan (Christina Applegate) was also in the house when the assailants struck -- with pipes and urgency -- and though she survived, she suffered severe brain damage and could never identify the killers. These were presumably thugs sent by local gangster Adel Nasrallah, a.k.a. the most generically named Eddie Nash (Eric Bogosian), who here comes complete with sleezy affect, short silk robe, and a bodyguard played by Faizon Love. Nash apparently sent his underlings to exact payback for a robbery of his home; the case was never officially solved and Holmes' part was never determined. Arrested in Florida six months later, charged and acquitted of the crime, Holmes died of AIDS-related illness at age 43, in 1988.

The story of the murders lingers in legend, in part because of the sheer horror of the crime scene (rendered here in bloody detail, more than once), and in part because of the squirmy Holmes' association. One version informs Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights, in which Holmes, transformed into Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), appears a naïve victim of his own ambitions and self-delusions. In Cox's less rhapsodic recounting, Holmes (Val Kilmer) is a self-loving lout, coke addict, and liar, seemingly unable to comprehend (or much care about) the destruction he brings to anyone in his vicinity.

Wonderland begins when Holmes is past his porn prime, and endeavoring, sort of, to convince his beautiful, Farrah-haired girlfriend Dawn Schiller (Kate Bosworth) to come back to him. Though she's been with him for five years (since she 15), she's tired of living in a series of skuzzy L.A. motels, and has run off with her Chihuahua. Picked up on the street and sheltered with a sputtering good Samaritan, Sally (Carrie Fisher), Dawn listens impatiently to her advice: "That boyfriend of yours. Talk about your demons! He's bad news." But, considering the dullsville existence embodied by Sally, the poor girl just can't help herself when her man arrives to fetch her, bearing apologies for his latest infraction and, no small thing, good drugs.

Mr. Bad News' entrance -- lurching, hirsute, desperate -- is almost startling, emphatically establishing his look and behavior for the rest of the film. Still caught up in his own "legend," he's jonesing for affection as much as for drugs or any other diversion. Dawn provides the reflection he needs, willing to see him as stud and supplier, lover and father figure. While the film takes a moment here to show the noisy urgency of their liaison (at this moment, on the Samaritan's bathroom sink), it's frankly uninterested in such acrobatics or in sex per se. They go through motions for a camera at low and close angles, cut into a semblance of jerky, anxious immediacy. Discovered by Sally, they run off to John's brokedown car, giddy and childish, big-eyed Chihuahua in tow.

If sex is not Wonderland's focus, neither is the extravagant violence to come. This despite the fact that the murder scene -- infamously first caught on police "crime scene" video, and the first time that such evidence was used in a courtroom -- is represented more than once in a Rashomon-ish hodgepodge. The first narration belongs to biker David Lind (Dylan McDermott, disguised under beard and leather jacket), a friend of Launius' whose flowerchild girlfriend Barbara is among the massacred.

Another version emerges in John's interview with a detective, Bill Ward (M.C. Gainey). This narrative, so obviously self-serving and cagily incomplete, takes the form of a weirdly ineffective seduction, hinting at John's previous performative skills as well as his onetime friendship with Bill, apparently premised on John's celebrity. That they're conversing for a police microphone, and both perform with some sense of self-importance and conspiracy, doesn't speak well for the cop, but it does underscore John's deathless charm.

Still another rendition of the story comes late in the film, offered reluctantly in flashbacks by Holmes' wife Sharon (a stunning Lisa Kudrow), in which he shows up at her place in shock and bloodied clothing on the night of the crime; she plainly resists being carried along by the tidal wave of John Holmes' colossal ego, but finds herself drawn, to him and to Dawn (an epilogue reveals that the women were lifelong friends, following their involvements with Mr. Wadd).

All of these stories resemble each other in basic organization, in Launius' crew's infraction and Nash's retaliation. But John's participation, as snivelly snitch or sadistic killer or some entity in between, is never determined absolutely. And though Wonderland does present all sorts of explicit and harrowing images, it really is about the inability to represent something so elusive as truth, even when it might be reduced to something so apparently irreducible as bodies -- sexed, dead, absolutely pornographic.

It's on this point, the exceedingly unpoetic ambiguity of experience, as it's remembered, willed, or narrated, that Wonderland makes the most sense. Though it spends some time introducing the miserable victims (junkies and pretenders, they incarnate the bottom John has "hit" more than they are detailed characters), as well as John's own self-inflations, the movie is about loss and perpetual transience rather than certainty.

Cox and Captain Mauzner's script -- drawn from an unmade screenplay by Todd Samovitz and D. Loriston Scott, as well as interviews with the real Dawn and Sharon, and various Holmes legends -- offers no conventionally sympathetic characters or resolution. Porn is supposed to be real sex, choreographed for viewer arousal. But the truth of it is always more complicated. Just so, there's no truth in this true crime, only the fictions that sustain "Hollywood," and all of its literal costs and metaphorical relations. It's a grisly business.