2 Days in the Valley [1996]
Director: John Herzfeld
Actor: Danny Aiello, James Spader, Jeff Daniels, Teri Hatcher, Charlize Theron, Eric Stoltz
You know which movies I like? Not because they’re deep, not because they’re well acted, not because they’re well directed; I like movies that are based on books coming from the Elmore Leonard school of writing. You know, Carl Hiaasen type stuff. Good examples are Get Shorty, Out of Sight and Jackie Brown. The thing that these stories all share, is a seemingly disconnected cast of characters, usually set in a psuedo-crime or glamorous setting that are all tied together by one event, be that the death of a film-star, or a hurricane, or stolen diamonds, or whatever. The stories play out independently of one another, and all kind of converge on the same place. Sometimes the characters do know eachother, but it’s always a random, chance encounter.
Anyway, I love those type of stories, because they’re interesting without being pretentious or hard to digest. 2 Days in the Valley is exactly such a story, and I honestly can’t give anything of the story away without ruining the entire premise of it all. It features a hitman, a mafia-enforcer, an olympic skier, a Swedish model, a vice cop that wants to be on homicide, a disgruntled ex-film director, and many, many more. Entertaining from start to finish.