Susan Granger’s review of “THE CAVEMAN’S VALENTINE” (Universal Focus)
Samuel L. Jackson is such a good actor that he can pull almost anything off – but not this rambling, complicated adaptation by George Dawes Green of his own novel. Dressed in bulky winter clothes with his hair in dreadlocks, Jackson plays Romulus Ledbetter, a one-time Julliard-trained pianist/composer who now lives as a homeless paranoid-schizophrenic inside a cluster of rocks in Inwood Park, which obviously stands for Manhattan’s Central Park. He believes a powerful adversary, called Stuyvesant, monitors him with “brain typhoons” from the Chrysler building, and everyone calls him “Caveman.” So, when he discovers the frozen corpse of a teenage junkie outside his cave on Valentine’s Day, no one believes him when he contends that the kid was murdered. Frustrated, he turns detective and discovers a prominent Mapplethorpe-like photographer (Colm Feore) who used the kid as a model. The whole concept is somewhat reminiscent of “The Fisher King” in which a homeless man holds the key to several vicious killings. Only, this time, we’re supposed to buy into the coincidence that the Caveman’s daughter (Aunjanue Ellis) just happens to be a cop, that a yuppie lawyer (Anthony Michael Hall) would befriend a vagrant, and that the Caveman’s wife (Tamara Tunie), as her younger self, would be a Greek chorus, questioning and challenging him. Director Kasi Lemmons made an impressive debut with “Eve’s Bayou” (1997) but her impressive visual style can’t overcome this ludicrous script. It’s neither a convincing portrait of mental illness nor a suspenseful thriller. But it does contain a charismatic performance by Samuel L. Jackson. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Caveman’s Valentine” is a deluded 4. It’s an urban whodunit done in by a weak plot.
