First Time at Bat

Christopher McQuarrie, screenwriter for The Usual Suspects, gets behind the lens for The Way of the Gun, in which Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro are two skeezeballs who kidnap a rich couple’s surrogate mother (Juliette Lewis). Nicky Katt and Taye Diggs play cops sent to stop them… Minnie Driver and Joey Lauren Adams (Chasing Amy) play feuding beauty pageant contestants in the Sally Field-directed Beautiful… Seinfeld‘s Jason Alexander directs Just Looking, a nostalgia piece set during the Fifties following the adventures of 14-year-old Lenny, whose goal for his summer in the Bronx is to see two people having sex… With his chilly good looks and creepy undertones, James Spader is the prince of perv (Sex, Lies & Videotape; Crash). But in The Watcher, from debut director Joe Charbanic, Spader is actually chasing the weirdo, not channeling him. Who’s the baddie? None other than Keanu Reeves, a serial killer who brings Spader’s FBI detective out of retirement.

This article appears in September 1 • 2000.

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