Two federal agents (Kyle MacLachlan, TV's Sex and the City and
Chris Isaak, TV's The Chris Isaak Show) arrive in twin Peaks and unravel the bizarre clues, mysterious disappearances and strange happenings that lead to the death of local girl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee, John Carpenter's Vampires).
Co-starring Kiefer Sutherland (TV's 24) and David Bowie, Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me plunges deep beneath the fasade of a town where nothing is as it seems.
Storyline: Essentially a prequel to David Lynch and Mark Frost's earlier TV series "Twin Peaks". The first half-hour or so concerns the investigation by FBI Agent Chet Desmond (Chris Isaak) and his partner Sam Stanley (Kiefer
Sutherland) into the murder of night-shift waitress Teresa Banks in the small Washington state town of Deer Meadow. When Desmond finds a mysterious clue to the murder, he inexplicably disappears. The film then cuts to one year later in the nearby town of
Twin Peaks and follows the events during the last week in the life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) a troubled teenage girl with two boyfriends; the hot-tempered rebel Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) and quiet biker James Hurley (James Marshall), her drug
addiction, and her relationship with her difficult (and possible schizophrenic) father Leland (Ray Wise), a story in which her violent murder was later to motivate much of the TV series. Contains a considerable amount of sex, drugs, violence, very loud
music and inexplicable imagery. Written by Douglas Baptie
Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Kenneth Brown, January 4, 2015 The death of Twin Peaks didn't come by cancellation. No, it was a violent implosion that brought an end to David Lynch and Mark Frost's cult phenomenon. After
garnering high praise from spellbound audiences and critics in 1990 with its first daring season, the tragically short-lived series began to fall apart a year later, with a more erratic second season that, in retrospect, was doomed to fail almost from the
start. Not only did network execs make the decision to up the episode count from seven to twenty-two, hoping to capitalize on the show's popularity, they demanded the resolution of Laura Palmer's murder, which came just eight episodes in. With the central
mystery all but solved and answers proving... divisive, Twin Peaks was forced to dramatically reorient and restructure, a necessity that slowly sent viewers scurrying. By the time the second season found its footing -- and, believe me, it did,
ending with a razor-sharp arc that culminated in a jaw-dropping cliffhanger -- it was too late. Twin Peaks, which had once burned so intensely no one could look away, had been snuffed out.
The rest of the story is the stuff of post-development hell. Lynch and Frost split. Irreconcilable differences. Key members of the cast parted ways. Most stood by their director, but others, Kyle MacLachlan in particular, felt abandoned, while still
others like Lara Flynn Boyle held a grudge, refusing to return to the Lynch fold. Wounded, reeling and above all obsessed, Lynch hurriedly announced, wrote and produced the now-infamous 1992 theatrical prequel Fire Walk with Me; sans Boyle and with
a distressing eleventh hour change that, by MacLachlan's own request, reduced Agent Cooper's role to a glorified cameo. Booed at Cannes, eviscerated by critics and flatly rejected at the box office (earning less than $5 million), the feature film was
nothing short of the saga's death knell. Twin Peaks was no more. All that remained, was Fire Walk with Me, a fatally flawed slice of closure that closes very little and, thank the Lynchian gods, will soon be remedied with Showtime's
resurrection of the series, due in 2016.
Rather than a continuation, a final chapter or a twisted follow-up to the series, Fire Walk with Me plays like a film you'd catch in a movie theater in Twin Peaks, Washington. In other words, bizarre, dreamlike and not entirely what you wanted,
expected or needed. Lynch, still reeling from the demise of the series, attempts to create cinema out of a cult phenomenon but only succeeds in creating something that feels like a Twin Peaks spin-off, or worse, a side story few really care about.
Lynch goes big and bold, though, and there's a curiosity and a touch of filmmaker-induced hypnotism that comes with the mysteries of Fire Walk with Me, keeping it all fresh enough to remain intriguing. Flawed? Terribly. Entertaining? Not quite.
Pure David Lynch? Oh yeah, even if it represents the visionary at a low point. The Blu-ray edition is solid, with a decent video presentation, an excellent DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, and a slew of special features, the collection of which
easily tops the film itself as the disc's must-see showpiece.
[CSW] -3.5- This reviewer included *spoilers* but has a better understanding than I originally had:
Lynch's misunderstood film is one of his greatest, in my opinion. It follows the last week of Laura Palmer's life, in all its tragic decadence. She is portrayed by Sheryl Lee, who gives an outstanding performance as a young woman whose life has careened out of control due to the presence of an evil entity named BOB, who has possessed her father. The first 20 minutes of the film begin a year prior, as two FBI agents uncover increasingly bizarre circumstances surrounding the death of Teresa Banks. This prologue is a triumph of surreal images, dialogue, and ideas which immediately alienated several fans of the TV series, who were granted a far more straight-forward approach. Many were also put off by the relative lack of Kyle MacLachlan as Dale Cooper, but the blame there lies with MacLachlan himself, who claimed he didn't want to be typecast the rest of his career. (Better to be known for SHOWGIRLS, right?) The story had to abandon the show's quirkiness, then, and become a study in the harrowing last days of Laura. The film becomes increasingly darker and grim until the inevitable conclusion. It is unflinching, disturbing, mysterious, and transcendent. It is a film you are meant to feel, and never completely understand all its intricacies. It begs re-evaluation in light of the excessive critical backlash which greeted it.