Balanced spoke movie

Tuesday, July 13th 1999

The Velocity of Gary (Not His Real Name)


Directed by Dan Ireland

Calculating Gary's said velocity might give occasion to a new definition of

warp speed

: lumbering and misshapen, apparently stitched together from the discarded limbs of unrelated scripts. Take the film's first 20 minutes, in which deaf transsexual Kid Joey (

Chad Lindberg

), just off the bus to the big city, gets viciously gay-bashed a few blocks from Port Authority. Brooding beauty Gary (

Thomas Jane

) comes to the rescue, but following a pointless musical interlude lip-synched to

Patsy Cline

's "Walkin' After Midnight," Kid Joey is hit and killed by a car. And that's it? we never hear about

Joey

again, as the film U-turns back to concentrate (however fitfully) on the fractious love triangle formed by Gary, Gary's lover Valentino (

Vincent D'Onofrio

), and Val's high-strung girlfriend

Mary Carmen

(

Salma Hayek

). Two end up with AIDS and a baby enters the picture, as we're informed through a back-and-forth narrative that would confuse even if the film weren't so atrociously directed and edited. The paper-doll characters exist solely to evoke our pity. For a cut-and-paste job this sloppy, they could at least have given the actors messier roles to play.

More by Jessica Winter