Ann Magnuson and Samuel L. Jackson in "The Caveman's Valentine."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, we give this film a: Stars: Samuel L. Jackson Director: Kasi Lemmons Rated: R, with graphic violence, profanity and nudity Length: 100 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Marshall Fine
Gannett News Service

(March 30, 2001) -- There's a good idea for a movie lurking within Kasi Lemmons' The Caveman's Valentine.

But then that good idea was alive within the confines of the George Dawes Green novel upon which it is based. Although Green adapted the screenplay himself, Lemmons' film never quite captures the pain and fiery anger that seemed to course through the prose.

It's a tough act to pull off, to be sure. Dawes' story centers on Romulus Ledbetter (played by the seemingly perfectly cast Samuel L. Jackson), a one-time Juilliard genius and would-be composer who dropped out of the world when he succumbed to mental illness.

Having left his wife and daughter behind, he now lives in a cave in a Manhattan park.

A self-sufficient scrounger, he preaches the gospel of his paranoia: that an evil, all-powerful genius named Cornelius Gould Stuyvesant controls life in New York from his office in the Chrysler Building, bombarding residents with mind-altering Y-rays that sap them of free will. Only Romulus has resisted.

When a body turns up outside Romulus' cave, Rom -- known as the Caveman to neighborhood residents -- is convinced that this is an aggressive act by Stuyvesant to capture Rom's mind as well. Then he hears from a young homeless friend named Matthew that, in fact, the dead man was Matthew's lover, a young model named Scott who was probably murdered by a wealthy artist named David Leppenraub (Colm Feore).

Rom decides that Leppenraub is an agent of Stuyvesant -- and that, by bringing Leppenraub to justice, he can put a crimp in Stuyvesant's plans.

It's an intriguing concept: a detective novel in which the hero is schizophrenic. It certainly works a lot better in Dawes' book than it does in his screenplay, which doesn't have the luxury of filling in Rom's back story.

Here, it's all presented in shorthand, which tends to diminish Rom to a caricature of a madman with moments of clarity. Nor does Jackson's performance bring insight to either the man's demons or his depths. Swathed in a curtain of manmade dreadlocks, he scuttles through the film hunched over and cowering, a man in fear for his life from unseen forces. It's a memorable performance, but -- crucially -- always a performance.

While Jackson is able to convey the conviction of Rom's fantasies, the rest of the cast cannot -- particularly Ann Magnuson as Leppenraub's sister, an artist who says with a blithe note to Rom, "You're psychotic, aren't you?" just before hopping into bed with him. Feore has a silky quality, but never transmits menace as Leppenraub.

What made Dawes' book intriguing was the uncertainty: Was Romulus on to a skein of evil that threaded its way from the Lower East Side to the moneyed estates of Dutchess County? Or was it all in his head? It doesn't help that Lemmons makes his horrifying visions as lurid as possible, never blurring the lines between reality and psychosis.

Telescoping the plot only serves to diminish it. It winds up as simplistic as a made-for-TV mystery, with characters that are too sketchy to care about. The Caveman's Valentine needed to be subtle -- and winds up instead drowning in its own obviousness.