Hamptons Househusbands
By Rex Reed
New York Observer
IF I DIDN'T CARE Running Time 95 minutes Written and directed by Benjamin and Orson Cummings Starring Bill Sage, Roy Scheider
Finally, don’t pass up a nifty little film noir called If I Didn’t Care. While the Ink Spots croon their way through the title tune, the explosion of a high-powered rifle shatters the peace of a summer on Long Island and sets the tone for a tight, surprising little thriller that strongly captures the bogus appeal of life in the Hamptons. Bill Sage, the handsome and versatile actor best known as the charismatic pedophile coach in Mysterious Skin, plays a trophy husband whose failure to father an heir leads to infidelity, and whose marital harassment leads to murder. Call it Desperate Househusbands. All this guy knows how to do is talk deals, walk his dog and turn every head on the beach while his wife shows houses in converted potato fields. The only way for this stud to pave the way to money and independence is to eighty-six his wife—with the help of his ambitious girlfriend. After the dingbat shoots the wrong person, arousing the suspicions of snoopy detective Roy Scheider, the only way to remove the danger of exposure is to eighty-six the girlfriend. It all starts to work out, but on his way to dispose of the body, the hapless husband totals the Range Rover by hitting a deer. The rest is one of those Alfred Hitchcock Hour episodes that leaves you with the taste of Angostura bitters, wanting more. Blithely written and carefully directed by the talented Cummings brothers, Benjamin and Orson, and filmed entirely on location in Manhattan and the Hamptons, If I Didn’t Care is full of fresh surprises and never wastes your time. It is also amazingly true to the underlying homicidal boredom of the Hamptons, where superficial people with too much money and too much free time on their hands don’t know what to do with themselves, so they all end up selling real estate.
OLD DIRTY TRICKS
Low-budget noir relies on time-honored formula with great results
By Eric Kohn
New York Press
Roy Scheider steals the show in If I Didn’t Care, and not only because he’s the foremost recognizable member of the cast. As the seasoned detective of a secluded Hamptons community, Scheider isn’t the centerpiece of this keen minimalist noir, but he’s the perfect choice for its moral heft. Building on the figure of social responsibility from Jaws, Scheider plays a similar character with an additional investigatory kick. The presence of an enjoyable random face (Scheider hasn’t been in anything memorable since David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch in 1991), relegated to a secondary role, often reveals the source of funding for low budget productions like If I Didn’t Care, but Scheider serves a more satisfying purpose. The plot revolves around one of those adulterer-turned-murderer schemes used a zillion times since Double Indemnity: Scheider is channeling Edward G. Robinson’s pensive insurance auditor from that seedy genre classic. In Jaws, Scheider portrayed a warrior guarding man from beast, not unlike his purpose in If I Didn’t Care. The shark in this tale is the dark impulse of human nature—a cliché, perhaps, but thematically daunting nonetheless.
Outside of the impressive supporting performance, the movie has much in common with Blood Simple. Just as that 1984 cult hit signaled the arrival of Joel and Ethan Coen as enthralling storytellers, If I Didn’t Care could work as a solid calling card for co-director siblings Ben and Orson Cummings. Although hardly as distinctly stylized as Blood Simple, their debut feature adheres to our expectations of the genre without becoming a bore. The main players go through the motions to establish anticipatory drama, and the filmmakers graciously satisfy our morbid curiosity.
Of course, the twist is visible long before it actually begins to gel. From the moment that hapless beau Davis (Bill Sage) laments that he can’t leave his icy business-oriented wife (Noelle Beck) for his secret lover (Susan Misner) without sacrificing the monetary benefits of his spouse’s profitable career, the stars are aligned for a familiar plan of attack. Davis and his deceitful paramour have such an easy time deciding to commit murder that you’d think they came to the conclusion after five minutes of Google abuse. Naturally, their conspiracy isn’t airtight, and the movie really takes off when things start going wrong. If I Didn’t Care doesn’t sympathize with its depraved protagonists. Instead, it allows us to rejoice in the guilty pleasure of watching a misguided ship of passion sink.
Of all the criminal scenarios enacted time and again with systematic redundancy, the devious love triangle remains the most endearing. Since the gimmick relies on the least expensive type of movie magic—acting—it has been sadly ignored in recent times by the production choices of the Hollywood machine. Big budget operations waste money on buying celebrity names and attaching them to less interesting formulas, particularly the whodunit, which usually turns into less a story than a guessing game. Consider I Know Who Killed Me, the poorly timed Lindsay Lohan-starrer that, on paper, sounds like an intriguing marriage of Hostel and Brian De Palma’s Sisters. Aside from the indisputable result that I Know Who Killed Me is unintentionally campy, clumsily staged, and hilariously, immeasurably awful in a sub-grindhouse way, it also spends a lamentably prolonged period of time dwelling on possible answers to its titular question. She knows whodunit, but nobody (least of all the audience) cares. The set up in If I Didn’t Care automatically transcends that narratological quagmire by putting the secrets onscreen and giving us the timeless pleasure of watching someone figure them out. Its finale feels a tad unnecessary and a bit hard to take, but it’s the journey, not the lethal finish, that keeps this immutable yarn alive.
Big Money, Big Houses and Big, Nasty Demons
by Stephen Holden
New York Times
“Mr. Scheider’s serpentine Columbo surrogate plays a sly cat-and-mouse game.”
“Mr. Sage is shrewdly cast as a facsimile of the younger Robert Redford.”
“’If I Didn’t Care,’... sustains a dark, chilly visual mood. Aerial shots of the Hamptons with their sprawling six-bedroom mansions paint this seaside resort as a gorgeous, forbidding shell inside of which the rot is beginning to accumulate.”
Catching a Homegrown Whodunit
by Gene Seymour
Newsday
“A neat and nasty little gem!”
“Co-directors-producers-writers Orson and Ben Cummings (yes, they're brothers) have made themselves a neat-and-nasty little gem, a combination of cozy whodunit and noir romance that follows the playbooks of those genres without making them feel threadbare.”
“Looks shiny and plays smart. ”
By Rex Reed
New York Observer
IF I DIDN'T CARE Running Time 95 minutes Written and directed by Benjamin and Orson Cummings Starring Bill Sage, Roy Scheider
Finally, don’t pass up a nifty little film noir called If I Didn’t Care. While the Ink Spots croon their way through the title tune, the explosion of a high-powered rifle shatters the peace of a summer on Long Island and sets the tone for a tight, surprising little thriller that strongly captures the bogus appeal of life in the Hamptons. Bill Sage, the handsome and versatile actor best known as the charismatic pedophile coach in Mysterious Skin, plays a trophy husband whose failure to father an heir leads to infidelity, and whose marital harassment leads to murder. Call it Desperate Househusbands. All this guy knows how to do is talk deals, walk his dog and turn every head on the beach while his wife shows houses in converted potato fields. The only way for this stud to pave the way to money and independence is to eighty-six his wife—with the help of his ambitious girlfriend. After the dingbat shoots the wrong person, arousing the suspicions of snoopy detective Roy Scheider, the only way to remove the danger of exposure is to eighty-six the girlfriend. It all starts to work out, but on his way to dispose of the body, the hapless husband totals the Range Rover by hitting a deer. The rest is one of those Alfred Hitchcock Hour episodes that leaves you with the taste of Angostura bitters, wanting more. Blithely written and carefully directed by the talented Cummings brothers, Benjamin and Orson, and filmed entirely on location in Manhattan and the Hamptons, If I Didn’t Care is full of fresh surprises and never wastes your time. It is also amazingly true to the underlying homicidal boredom of the Hamptons, where superficial people with too much money and too much free time on their hands don’t know what to do with themselves, so they all end up selling real estate.
OLD DIRTY TRICKS
Low-budget noir relies on time-honored formula with great results
By Eric Kohn
New York Press
Roy Scheider steals the show in If I Didn’t Care, and not only because he’s the foremost recognizable member of the cast. As the seasoned detective of a secluded Hamptons community, Scheider isn’t the centerpiece of this keen minimalist noir, but he’s the perfect choice for its moral heft. Building on the figure of social responsibility from Jaws, Scheider plays a similar character with an additional investigatory kick. The presence of an enjoyable random face (Scheider hasn’t been in anything memorable since David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch in 1991), relegated to a secondary role, often reveals the source of funding for low budget productions like If I Didn’t Care, but Scheider serves a more satisfying purpose. The plot revolves around one of those adulterer-turned-murderer schemes used a zillion times since Double Indemnity: Scheider is channeling Edward G. Robinson’s pensive insurance auditor from that seedy genre classic. In Jaws, Scheider portrayed a warrior guarding man from beast, not unlike his purpose in If I Didn’t Care. The shark in this tale is the dark impulse of human nature—a cliché, perhaps, but thematically daunting nonetheless.
Outside of the impressive supporting performance, the movie has much in common with Blood Simple. Just as that 1984 cult hit signaled the arrival of Joel and Ethan Coen as enthralling storytellers, If I Didn’t Care could work as a solid calling card for co-director siblings Ben and Orson Cummings. Although hardly as distinctly stylized as Blood Simple, their debut feature adheres to our expectations of the genre without becoming a bore. The main players go through the motions to establish anticipatory drama, and the filmmakers graciously satisfy our morbid curiosity.
Of course, the twist is visible long before it actually begins to gel. From the moment that hapless beau Davis (Bill Sage) laments that he can’t leave his icy business-oriented wife (Noelle Beck) for his secret lover (Susan Misner) without sacrificing the monetary benefits of his spouse’s profitable career, the stars are aligned for a familiar plan of attack. Davis and his deceitful paramour have such an easy time deciding to commit murder that you’d think they came to the conclusion after five minutes of Google abuse. Naturally, their conspiracy isn’t airtight, and the movie really takes off when things start going wrong. If I Didn’t Care doesn’t sympathize with its depraved protagonists. Instead, it allows us to rejoice in the guilty pleasure of watching a misguided ship of passion sink.
Of all the criminal scenarios enacted time and again with systematic redundancy, the devious love triangle remains the most endearing. Since the gimmick relies on the least expensive type of movie magic—acting—it has been sadly ignored in recent times by the production choices of the Hollywood machine. Big budget operations waste money on buying celebrity names and attaching them to less interesting formulas, particularly the whodunit, which usually turns into less a story than a guessing game. Consider I Know Who Killed Me, the poorly timed Lindsay Lohan-starrer that, on paper, sounds like an intriguing marriage of Hostel and Brian De Palma’s Sisters. Aside from the indisputable result that I Know Who Killed Me is unintentionally campy, clumsily staged, and hilariously, immeasurably awful in a sub-grindhouse way, it also spends a lamentably prolonged period of time dwelling on possible answers to its titular question. She knows whodunit, but nobody (least of all the audience) cares. The set up in If I Didn’t Care automatically transcends that narratological quagmire by putting the secrets onscreen and giving us the timeless pleasure of watching someone figure them out. Its finale feels a tad unnecessary and a bit hard to take, but it’s the journey, not the lethal finish, that keeps this immutable yarn alive.
Big Money, Big Houses and Big, Nasty Demons
by Stephen Holden
New York Times
“Mr. Scheider’s serpentine Columbo surrogate plays a sly cat-and-mouse game.”
“Mr. Sage is shrewdly cast as a facsimile of the younger Robert Redford.”
“’If I Didn’t Care,’... sustains a dark, chilly visual mood. Aerial shots of the Hamptons with their sprawling six-bedroom mansions paint this seaside resort as a gorgeous, forbidding shell inside of which the rot is beginning to accumulate.”
Catching a Homegrown Whodunit
by Gene Seymour
Newsday
“A neat and nasty little gem!”
“Co-directors-producers-writers Orson and Ben Cummings (yes, they're brothers) have made themselves a neat-and-nasty little gem, a combination of cozy whodunit and noir romance that follows the playbooks of those genres without making them feel threadbare.”
“Looks shiny and plays smart. ”