Brian De Palma is simply a gun for hire

Occasional success gives audiences hope
The two primary tasks of a director are to get the script in shape, and then cast the movie well. After that a trained chimpanzee could at least deliver a workmanlike rough cut.

While De Palma’s casting usually passes muster, his ability to assess a script and develop it until it crackles is the inconsistent element responsible for his yo-yo career.

In the 23 years since “Scarface,” there have only been two films directed by De Palma that succeeded on both a critical and commercial level — “The Untouchables” in 1987 and “Carlito’s Way” in 1993.

Neither will ever be remembered in the same breath as masterpieces by De Palma contemporaries such as Coppola’s first two “Godfather” pictures, Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” or even Steven Spielberg’s box office smashes like “Jaws” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

But they worked. “The Untouchables” featured a stellar cast led by Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro and Sean Connery, and it boasted a script by David Mamet. “Carlito’s Way,” starring Pacino and Sean Penn, was much less of a hit with audiences but probably brought De Palma more respect among cinephiles.

His next film after “Carlito’s Way” was “Mission: Impossible,” starring Tom Cruise, which theoretically should have strengthened De Palma’s reputation. Although it grossed over $180 million domestically — which was not the Hollywood chump change in 1996 that it is now — the picture was ridiculed for its byzantine script by Robert Towne and David Koepp. De Palma was not hired to direct “Mission: Impossible II.”

And since “Scarface,” De Palma has made some now-classic clunkers, most notably the debacle that was “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (1990) but also “Raising Cain” (1992), “Snake Eyes” (1998), “Femme Fatale” (2002) and perhaps the worst De Palma effort of them all, “Mission to Mars” (2000).

Few directors have managed to last as long in the business by alternating so radically between minor triumphs and major disasters. Maybe he’s just a lucky guy.

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