Remember those old school, star-studded, intertwining-character piece style dramas, like ‘Grand Canyon,’ and ‘Crash?’ Well imagine one of those starred Tom Berenger, E from Entourage, Sylvester Stallone, Nelly, Kelsey Grammer, and Kyra Sedgwick, and you basically have ‘Reach Me,’ from writer/director John Herzfeld (best known, so far as I can tell, for directing ‘2 Days In The Valley,’ though he also shot a featurette for ‘The Expendables’).
Though it gets much weirder than that. Nelly plays some kind of born-again rapper (named “E-Ruption” according to IMDB) obsessed with a self-help book written by Sylvester Stallone, who likes to inspire people while painting (“You’re a finger painting! Be a masterpiece!”). Out there, but okay, fine. Then you’ve got your usual collection of troubled souls getting in car crashes and whatnot. The music swells and it feels like your usual manipulative life-affirmer, but in the midst of all this, there’s Thomas Jane, playing some kind of vigilante cop that murders people (“How many people do you have to kill before you realize it’s wrong!” demands Danny Aiello). What the shit? It’s like Herzfeld wanted to make this emo dramedy, but forgot to tell Thomas Jane to stop playing The Punisher. It’s so awesomely bizarre, it’s like if one of the storylines in ‘Magnolia’ was Liam Neeson in ‘Taken.’
Also, this is neither here nor there, I suppose, but I can’t stop laughing at this picture:
E in his fancy scarf, something about it just doesn’t fit. It like if someone put a top hat on a llama.
‘Reach Me’ opens October 24th in the US.