Word: russo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sick, I'm tired and I'm armed too." The one-liners hardly rule the show, and after his quota is filled, Eastwood really gets into character, leaving nothing to be desired. He makes a good connection with the other two lead roles, those of Agent Lily Rains (Rene Russo) and the would be assassin, a man known first as "Booth" because of his obsession with Presidential assassinations...
...Rene Russo...
...Gopher Prairie doesn't have many young to suffocate and embitter these days. Russo's characters in the fictional town of North Bath, not far from the Vermont border, are rueful losers who, late in middle age, have known one another since grade school. They weren't all that bright then, and they don't expect much of one another now. Improvisation least of all; after several decades on adjacent bar stools, they can say one another's lines...
...seems more jokey than funny. Occasionally, it threatens to become patronizing. Most of the time it works, however, not so much because the author keeps things stirred up but because he persuades the reader to share his great, openhearted fondness for his ridiculous characters. A compact is signed, Russo saying something like, "O.K., yeah, Sully's being a bit of a jerk, but watch what he's going to do now . . ." Or, "Did you meet Vera the Awful Ex-Wife? No? Well, here she comes...
Because they feature nearly the same geographic backwater, and the same sense of being in a region that has fallen out of time, Russo's comedies will be compared to William Kennedy's Albany series, Ironweed, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game and the rest. For now, Kennedy's writing is darker and grimmer, ^ and the resemblance is distant. Kennedy shows the skull beneath the skin; Russo gives us societal desiccation as farce...