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Cat Chaser (1989)

Dir: Abel Ferrara

George Moran (Peter Weller) is an ex U.S. Paratrooper who took part in the American intervention (to stop a supposed Communist infiltrated Party from taking over) in The Dominican Republic.
He now runs the 'Coconut Palms Residential Apartments' in Florida.

Nolen Tyler (Frederic Forrest) arrives at "The Palms" sporting an Army tattoo of the 82nd Airborne, who also took part in the Dominican revolution. Moran strikes up a friendship with the hard drinking, down on his luck Tyler and informs him he plans to journey back to Santo Domingo to try and deal with a nightmare he keeps having of when he was fighting there by finding the Dominican girl who saved from being executed.

Meanwhile a Jiggs Scully (Charles Durning) arrives at "The Palms" looking for one of Moran's guests. Jiggs is an ex-Cop and all round nasty piece of work who now works on the wrong side of the Law as an 'enforcer'.
Tyler admits to George that he is working for Jiggs and that he was hired to watch Moran, something the worldly wise George excepts and decides won't spoil their friendship.

While in Santo Domingo Moran an old flame named Mary DeBoya (Kelly McGillis) and beds her.
Mary is the Wife of Andres DeBoya (Tomas Milian) the brutal ex-head of the Dominican Secret Police who knows about Moran once having a thing for Mary and is now in exile in Florida.
With everyone back in Florida, Mary plans to divorce her Husband and get the 2 million dollars promised in the pre-nuptial agreement.

To complicate matters Jiggs (who does the odd job for DeBoya) is after the reported 'emergency' millions DeBoya keeps in his mansion if he needs to flee Florida and wants Moran to get Mary to tell him where it's kept.
But all is not as it seems and soon betrayal, cross, double cross and murder is the name of the game as everyone tries to get rich and, more importantly, stay alive…..

 

How to review a film that is not what it should be and is not what was envisioned by its Director?
Carefully and with sadly no firm critical conclusions is the answer.

Ferrara's adaptation of one of Elmore Leonard's most respected novels (with a screenplay by James Borrelli and Leonard) was pretty much doomed from the start.
The company he was making it for, 'Vestron' were about to go belly up and had little time to bother with "Cat Chaser" in the chaos, and added to that Ferrara left the project before the final edit to grasp the chance to start work on his masterful "The Bad Lt."
So away went Abel's rough cut (approaching something like 3 hours and judged to be in need of drastic shortening by the Producers) and in came a just over 90 minute edit by Anthony Redman on their behalf, with a non-Ferrara approved narration track added (which itself went through various re-writes).
To compound the tragedy this version was then trimmed by the MPAA and never given a U.S cinema release, instead going straight to video!

Ferrara seems to nearly always produce his best work when on the mean streets of New York, but the Florida setting of "Cat Chaser" still offers up many chances to deliver Ferrara's gritty, low life atmosphere that makes his work so strong.
Although sadly not working with his normal Cinematographer Ken Kelsch, who really aids Ferrara's creative power, Ferrara does manage to capture (with Cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond) the low rent, tacky feel to of "The Coconut Palms" hotel, the dark Dominican streets and the cold grandeur of DeBoys ocean front mansion. This is not the bright, flower covered shirt Florida of the Disney franchise.
In fact it feels like a sunnier version of an off season UK resort town. Somehow depressed, worn and peeling, as blighted by the corruption of the Human's around it as much as by the passing of time and the weather. There is more than one kind of neglect here.

So the film looks fine (though not particularly interesting) and captures the mood of its worn lead characters, but its hurt badly by that eviscerated, edited to Hell story.
The trip to The Dominican Republic is made to be a very important part of George Moran's whole character and gets a big build up. Yet in the final edit (with all of Moran's 'nightmares' of the conflict deleted) this aspect of the plot and the whole trip becomes nothing more than an excuse to have Moran bed Mary and to bring in the character of a Dominican street hustler trying to con George.
The seeming importance of Moran finding his saviour is simply shrugged off when we move back to Florida after a fruitless search for her. And with this part of the plot taking up a 3rd of the film it only seems to make it more wasteful.

It's also obvious that much of the complex characterisation has gone (with only fleeting glimpses of the history and mindset of this group of fascinating players remaining) as well as having the clever double crossing plot, hat takes in everything from illicit romance to political fallout, ultimately being trimmed to the bone and seemingly made too simple via the finale. There is a lot to enjoy here (especially during the last half of the movie) but it does feel like a once hearty 'Pulp fiction' stew has had much of it's meat removed.

Also, unlike most Ferrara films, "Cat Chaser" is stuck with a pedestrian music score by Chick Corea (who seems to have thankfully given up the business) and to anyone familiar with Abel's work will really feel the loss of the expertly used source music and/or the original compositions by the likes of Joe Delia.

The narration is ultimately pointless (never doing anything but add comments about the characters that we have to take at face value as nothing on-screen backs up the words) and would seem to exist solely to add that much used 'Private Eye/ Pulp fiction' cliché. Only here the voice is actually none of the actors or seems to be linked directly with any of the characters.

But we at least have on major strength of all Ferrara's movies left intact and that's the strong performances.

As Jiggs Scully, Charles Durning is the highlight and is in outstanding form. He essays one of cinema's most unpleasant, arrogant, sly and sleazy characters perfectly, and he supposedly (I've never read the Leonard book myself) brings the novel's Jiggs to life perfectly.
He also has the best of the film's hardboiled dialogue.

Forrest is as likeable as ever and has, by this time, got playing roguish characters down to a fine art. That he makes such a strong impression with a character that is so underused (again I can't say who is to blame for this having never seen Ferrara's cut) speaks volumes for his performance.

Veteran Euro Cult legend Tomas Milian makes his character as suitably arrogant and cold as only the head of a Secret Police Force can be, but again his character really feels like he has much missing from his make-up.

Weller is in fine stoic form and makes Moran's laid back attitude (unless pushed too far) a genuinely engaging part of his character and as such successfully makes the fact that Moran is so understanding of Tyler's revelation about who he is working for so believable.

The only weak link is Kelly McGillis. She is far too bland an actress for such an important and fiery role and makes little impact. But she was at least willing to appear nude because the role warranted it, thus avoiding the always compromised and obvious body double situations.

The mention of nudity also brings us to the infamous sequence where Mary has a loaded gun trailed over her naked body, with it originally ending up between her open legs.
This finale to the sequence was trimmed for an 'R' rating (and would seem to be only in a long out of print NTSC VHS now) though luckily, as it now exists, the scene is still as rough and as charged with sordid violence as you would expect of such an occurrence when filmed by Ferrara.

The other explicit scene involves a shooting in a bathroom. Again it was trimmed for an 'R' and it shows but it's still a strong scene due to the cold-blooded nature of the act and the mixture of full frontal male nudity and bloodshed.

So in the final assessment "Cat Chaser" is obviously missing important chunks of the character's personality and motivations and has obviously had it's complex plot trimmed and simplified, but given the fact that it was so drastically edited of shot footage, without the Director's input, means it seems unfair to judge Ferrara's movie by it's weaknesses because if Ferrara had been involved in the movie's final incarnation…those weaknesses may never have existed.
Or, perhaps they would have only in a different way.
As it is then we have an above average thriller with some strong acting (especially by Durning) some engaging, if compromised, characters and a suitably seedy atmosphere, but who can say what it could have been?