Touch

With Bridget Fonda, Christopher Walken, Skeet Ulrich, Tom Arnold
Written by by Elmore Leonard
Directed by Paul Schrader (MGM/UA)
by Scott Hefflon

Unlike Leonard’s stylish Get Shorty, Touch is basically a syrupy love story with one small difference: This guy can heal people. Touch stars today’s sensitive hunk of the wood block of Holly, Skeet Ulrich. Complete with the facial hair of Johnny “Don Juan” Depp (missing in Scream), Ulrich plays the thoughtful nice guy Juvenal, a post-Franciscan monk who’s been healing and hiding in an L.A. rehab center. He’s “discovered” by Bill Hill (Walken), an evangelist-cum-RV-salesman who longs to tell the tale, and take 90% of the till. He enlists ex-baton-twirler-for-Christ, Lynn (Fonda), to sway Juvenal, but she ends up falling for his boyish good looks, his relaxed air, his desire to do good, and the fact that he bleeds from hands, feet, and side when he heals the sick. Luckily, all this dippy, drippy love stuff that we’ve seen before and we’ll see again is accompanied by some witty dialog, a disturbed religious fanatic who craves the spotlight (for His name’s sake, of course), and the diverse music of David Grohl. If it’s a tender moment Clapton would liltingly cheese out, Grohl retains a bit of gritty integrity with either a dab of guitar distortion or a rough edge to the voice while playing a heartbreaking melody. And the transitional walking scene music is on par (different, yet equal) with Pulp Fiction and Morphine’s work in Get Shorty. But let’s face it, Christopher Walken ain’t no John Travolta when it comes to walking scenes. Walken is famous for his delivery, but despite his slick attire, Travolta struts circles around him.

Setting up the relationship, Juvenal and Lynn share innocent questions, asked merely for curiosity and getting to know the other better, as opposed to the selfish and forceful inquisitions the journalists put them both through later. Skeet, obviously, is a sweetheart, and Bridget Fonda plays the role of a cuddly girlfriend beautifully (remember the scenes in Point of No Return when she wasn’t killing people?). OK, so this is a love story, but the bad guys are just users and not really evil (Walken whines when not wheeling and dealing), and even Fundamentalist nutball August Murray (Arnold) is merely a vain, misguided virgin with good intentions. As in Natural Born Killers, the media is the true evil, followed closely by the selfish music promoter (David Mazursky, who played a down-and-out director in 2 Days in the Valley), and the quick-to-judge/slow-to-learn general public. Love conquers everyone’s greed for fame and fortune by side-stepping the dogfight altogether. Whether I buy that or not,Touch, as Juvenal points out in his own defense, makes no claims. I guess it’s a faith thing.