The town of Palmetto, Florida is one of those places losers like Harry end up in. Because it's Florida, we already know it's seedy and corrupt -- at least that's how Florida is presented in many recent movies. Harry's got nothing there except his old girlfriend (Gina Gershon), but she's enough for him until he meets Rhea Malroux in a bar. Rhea (Elisabeth Shue) exudes sex. Physically, Rhea comes from the Lana Turner branch of film noir, as in "The Postman Always Rings Twice," robustly fleshy and pneumatic. Mentally, Rhea seems like the daughter of Barbara Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity": she's got a scheme, she needs a guy to help, and Harry looks dumb enough to go along with her.
Rhea is married to a wealthy older man who's dying of cancer. She lives with him, their manservant Donnelly (Michael Rapaport), and her step-daughter Odette. What Rhea proposes is that Harry help her and Odette pull off a fake kidnapping. Odette will disappear for a few days, Harry will demand a huge ransom, and keep $50,000 for his trouble.
Women problems plague poor Harry. First, Rhea gives him a tumble. Then his girlfriend senses that Harry is involved with someone else. Then Odette (Chloe Sevigny) turns out to be a vamp like her step-mother. Harrelson is at his best in scenes which emphasize this comic perplexity. Unlike most film noir heros, who usually have only one woman wrapping them around their little finger, Harry's got three.
He unwraps quickly when the kidnapping scheme encounters unexpected, deadly complications. Screenwriter E. Max Frye based "Palmetto" on Just Another Sucker, written in the 1930's by British author James Hadley Chase. The title of Hadley's book gives a clue about how Rhea uses Harry. All I can say is that everything that happens to him seems surprising, and yet one minute later you know you've seen it a thousand times before. Eventually the plot gets so twisted that all the logic is squeezed out of the story.
You don't have to believe the story in a film like this to enjoy it. Film noir usually looks at seedy characters driven by sex and greed into schemes which inevitably backfire, but it's also noteworthy for its style as well as its subject. Classics of the 40s, like "Postman" and "Double Indemnity," deliberately pushed black and white film photography into new, dark corners (aided by newer, faster film that made it possible to shoot with less light). Director of Photography Thomas Kloss captures, in color, much of that tonality, mainly by keeping Harrelson, Gershon, Shue, etc. indoors as much as possible. Harrelson is often seen half in shadow.
But if "Palmetto" has the look and feel of film noir, there's something missing: passion. The poor boob in classic noir is usually driven by good old fashioned lust. He knows he's a sucker but can't help himself. Think of the ending of "Maltese Falcon" when Spade looks at Brigid and knows she expects him to take the fall for her. Or, better, think of William Hurt at the end of "Body Heat," a movie that kept coming to mind as I watched "Palmetto". Harry's a sucker, but there's no sense that passion is what drives him. Without that, we're cheated out of those great moments at the end of classic noir films, when the hero (poor word to use here) achieves a moment of self-awareness as the prison door closes or the executioner turns on the juice.
One problem stems from casting. Shue played a hooker in "Leaving Las Vegas," but she doesn't come across as a bad girl type. Her sexual vamping in "Palmetto" makes her look like a Snap-Tool calendar girl, all bounce and flounce. Gina Gershon, on the other hand, does have a dark, dangerous look, and used it to advantage in "Bound". But her role here doesn't make much use of that quality.
The main problem, though, is that the filmmakers conceived "Palmetto" from the outside, as a series of film noir moves and moods, without much attention to its necessary psychological grittiness. Director Volker Schlondorff has worked chiefly in Germany (his 1979 film "The Tin Drum" won the Best Foreign Film Oscar). The source novel was written by an Englishman. Could these facts explain why the film is entertaining but empty?