Like the palmetto bugs that the film and its chief location take their name from, reporter Harry Barber (Harrelson) spends his time skittering around the Florida backwaters, bumping into things and getting stepped on by The Man. As the film opens, Harry’s just been sprung from the state pen, where he’s spent the last two years on a trumped-up charge. He’s a mensch, a schlemiel, a putz whose luck has pretty much run out, leaving him with little choice but to make one final grab for that brass ring (in Harry’s case it isn’t even that — copper is probably all that he could manage). That ring arrives in the form of femme fatale Rhea Malroux (Shue), an eye-poppingly sultry sexkitty sporting a skin-tight wardrobe and a pout to match, who enlists Harry’s reluctant aid in the faux kidnapping of her stepdaughter Odette (Sevigny). She needs a bagman and Harry needs the $50,000 she promises, and so, against his better judgment, he deal himself in. And of course, everything goes downhill from there. This is the last thing I expected to see from the director of The Tin Drum, and though it’s not exactly what I would term a success, Palmetto follows the rules of film noir so slavishly that it’s tough not to like it just on its own dopey, headstrong merit. The casting of Harrelson in the role of just-this-side-of-stupid Harry is inspired: It’s hard, nay, impossible, to imagine anyone else who could so easily straddle the line between suck and sucker with such dumbass bravado. Harrelson is shaping up to be one of the great actors of our time, though you wouldn’t have guessed it 10 years back when he was slinging beers for Sam Malone. He can do more with a throwaway nod and an enervated slouch than most actors can do with a lifetime at the Actor’s Studio, and I’ll be the first to admit I never saw it coming either. He plays this sad-sack loser with all the stillborn energy of the dead eye of a hurricane, and it’s a hoot to watch him squint ‘n’ drawl as his world falls to pieces. Gershon, as Harry’s wife, is once again defined by her lips (to excellent effect). And Sevigny, as the wayward, double-crossing, doomed Odette, adds four or five extra consonants to the word “legs.” Shue, for her part, plays the conniving heiress with more than a touch of salacious ooze; she’s that proverbial kitten with a whip, the bad, bad girl that every film noir claims as its own. There’s another main player here, and that’s the steamy Florida town of Palmetto. Taking a tip from Ridley Scott, Schlöndorff drowns everything in a humid, sticky haze; there hasn’t been this much perspiration on screen since Kasdan’s Body Heat, and the only things here that seem arid or extra dry are the martinis Shue steadily downs. It’s not great filmmaking — Palmetto never gels like it should and the ending feels far too rushed — but it is great acting, predatory sex bombs and all.
This article appears in February 27 • 1998 (Cover).