Clay Pigeons (1998)

New York Times
"...Witty....A film that delights by confounding expectations..." 09/25/1998 p.E22

Box Office
"...A highly entertaining thriller....Superior originality is evidenced here, keeping film noir alive and pulsing..." -- 4 out of 5 stars 10/01/1998 p.52

Los Angeles Times
"...CLAY PIGEONS' trademark is how quickly and without warning it moves from comedy to horror. Both director Dobkin and writer Healy have a nice feeling for this transition..." 09/25/1998 p.C2

New York Times 8 of 10
With his wounded baby doe eyes and oddly curled-up lips, Joaquin Phoenix often resembles an overgrown little boy who has only recently stopped sucking his thumb. It is this look more than anything that has led to his being typecast as a lost, sweetly bumbling perpetual adolescent, part fragile innocent, part credulous patsy. And in David Dobkin's smart, spiffily photographed genre spoof, Clay Pigeons, Phoenix is snugly cast as a naive young cowboy whose very niceness threatens to be his downfall. This self-consciously witty film about modern-day cowboys, vixens, serial killers and law officers in contemporary Montana partakes of the same off-kilter seriocomic esthetic as the Coen Brothers' film Fargo. Janeane Garofalo's pungent turn as a sarcastically urbane FBI agent investigating a series of killings in the region lights up the movie with the same kind of deadpan humor Frances McDormand brought to the role of an intrepid Minnesota police detective in Fargo.... Appearances to the contrary, Clay Pigeons isn't a suspense movie about an innocent man desperately trying to clear his name. The film, written by Matt Healy and directed by Dobkin in an ostentatiously hip style that undercuts sentimentality or melodrama, is really a character-driven shaggy-dog story whose point may be that there is no point. Conjuring a bunch of sharply drawn oddballs who defy standard western stereotypes, the movie lets their collisions determine the story's tone and shape. This results in a film that delights by confounding expectations. Vaughn's Lester is part shambling charmer, part lunatic, and you're never sure when he's suddenly going to erupt into a monster. Phoenix's Clay is a not-so-dumb country bumpkin whose saving grace is a stubborn, almost shining integrity. Ms. Garofalo, as Agent Shelby, a tough, smart city slicker who finds herself in the boondocks, is the closest thing in the film to an authorial voice. That voice is unimpressed with the lingering Old West mystique that the rest of the film slyly debunks. - Stephen Holden
 
Box Office Magazine 8 of 10
First-time director David Dobkin has pulled together a highly entertaining thriller that keeps fairly true to the conventions of classic film noir (Otto Preminger's similarly themed Where the Sidewalk Ends may have been a reference), and, for the first time since the torrid and brooding Body Heat, actually brings a clean, new and very funny edge to the weathered genre of crime and sleaze... The first half of Clay Pigeons is an outstanding lesson in filmmaking, but the film is undermined by a slow second half featuring an FBI investigation headed by a miscast Janeane Garofalo. She forces dramatic material into a comedic domain, which is certainly appreciated in concept, but is failed in execution. Nevertheless, superior originality is evidenced here, keeping film noir alive and pulsing. - Jon A. Walz