City Desk: Snow Day

These are no garden-variety scenarists. Their script, transposing the action to the vicinity of Reno, and greatly expanding the novella while remaining faithful to its essence, is far superior to Penn’s two previous directorial ventures, Indian Runner and The Crossing Guard. Matthäi has become detective Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson), who likewise promises the victim’s distraught mother that he’ll find the killer, and goes to almost insane lengths to do it.

The process whereby a fellow cop (the good Aaron Eckhart) extracts a confession from a retarded Indian (the always fascinating Benicio Del Toro) is as sub-duedly harrowing as a scene can get, and the fanatical way Jerry, disbelieving the confession, goes on his epic wild-goose chase is riveting. This may indeed be Jack Nicholson’s crowning performance. The actor’s naturally ogival eyebrows, looking like naves of mini-cathedrals, his forehead crisscrossed by lines as if for a game of tic-tac-toe, the gaze alternately cozy and perforating, the mustache rugged, the receding hair hedgehoggishly erect— all this cuts deep. And then there is his mercurial, moving performance.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

Featured Tags

These are no garden-variety scenarists. Their script, transposing the action to the vicinity of Reno, and greatly expanding the novella while remaining faithful to its essence, is far superior to Penn’s two previous directorial ventures, Indian Runner and The Crossing Guard. Matthäi has become detective Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson), who likewise promises the victim’s distraught mother that he’ll find the killer, and goes to almost insane lengths to do it.

The process whereby a fellow cop (the good Aaron Eckhart) extracts a confession from a retarded Indian (the always fascinating Benicio Del Toro) is as sub-duedly harrowing as a scene can get, and the fanatical way Jerry, disbelieving the confession, goes on his epic wild-goose chase is riveting. This may indeed be Jack Nicholson’s crowning performance. The actor’s naturally ogival eyebrows, looking like naves of mini-cathedrals, his forehead crisscrossed by lines as if for a game of tic-tac-toe, the gaze alternately cozy and perforating, the mustache rugged, the receding hair hedgehoggishly erect— all this cuts deep. And then there is his mercurial, moving performance.