u turn movie review

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Only Oliver Stone knows what he was trying to accomplish by making "U-Turn,'' and it is a secret he doesn't share with the audience. This is a repetitive, pointless exercise in genre filmmaking--the kind of movie where you distract yourself by making a list of the sources.

Much of the story comes from " Red Rock West ," John Dahl's 1994 film about a man and a wife who both try to persuade a drifter to kill the other. And the images and milieu are out of Russ Meyer country; his "Cherry, Harry and Raquel'' and "SuperVixens'' contain the same redneck sheriffs, the same lustful wives, the same isolated shacks and ignorant mechanics and car culture. "U-Turn'' and "Cherry'' both end, indeed, with a debt to "Duel in the Sun.'' I imagine Stone made this movie as sort of a lark, after the exhausting but remarkable accomplishments of "Nixon," "Natural Born Killers," "Heaven and Earth" and "JFK." Well, he deserves a break--but this one? Stone is a gifted filmmaker not afraid to take chances, to express ideas in his films and make political statements. Here he's on holiday. Watching "U-Turn,'' I was reminded of a concert pianist playing "Chopsticks'': It is done well, but one is disappointed to find it done at all.

The film stars Sean Penn in a convincing performance all the more admirable for being pointless. He plays Bobby, a man who has had bad luck up the road (his bandaged hand is missing two fingers), and will have a lot more bad luck in the desert town of Superior, Ariz. He wheels into town in his beloved Mustang convertible, which needs a new radiator hose, and encounters the loathsome Darrell ( Billy Bob Thornton ), a garage mechanic he will eventually be inspired to call an "ignorant inbred turtleneck hick.'' While Darrell works on the car, Bobby walks into town. Superior is one of those backwater hells much beloved in the movies, where everyone is malevolent, oversexed, narrow-eyed and hateful. There are never any industries in these towns (except for garages, saloons and law enforcement) because everyone is too preoccupied by sex, lying, scheming, embezzling and hiring strangers to kill each other.

Bobby quickly finds a sultry young woman named Grace ( Jennifer Lopez ), and is invited home to help her install her drapes and whatever else comes to mind. Soon her enraged husband, Jake ( Nick Nolte ), comes charging in, red-eyed and bewhiskered, to threaten Bobby with his life, but after the obligatory fight, they meet down the road and Jake asks Bobby to kill his wife. Soon Grace will want Bobby to kill her husband (the "Red Rock West'' bit), and the film leads to one of those situations where Bobby's life depends on which one he believes.

Superior, Ariz., is the original town without pity. During the course of his brief stay there, Bobby will be kicked in the ribs several dozen times, almost be bitten by a tarantula, shot at, and have his car all but destroyed--and that's all before the final scenes with the vultures circling overhead. Bobby comes across almost like a character in a computer game; you wipe him out, he falls down, stars spin around his head, and then he jumps up again, ready for action.

The film is well made on the level of craft; of course it is, with this strong cast, and Stone directing, and Robert Richardson as cinematographer. But it goes around and around until, like a merry-go-round rider, we figure out that the view is always changing but it's never going to be new. There comes a sinking feeling, half an hour into the film, when we realize that the characters are not driven by their personalities and needs, but by the plot. At that point they become puppets, not people. That's the last thing we'd expect in a film by Oliver Stone.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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U-Turn (1997)

Rated R For Strong Violence, Sexuality and Language

125 minutes

Sean Penn as Bobby Cooper

Powers Boothe as Sheriff

Julie Hagerty as Flo

Billy Bob Thornton as Darrell

Jon Voight as Blind Man

Nick Nolte as Jake McKenna

Joaquin Phoenix as Toby N. Tucker

Jennifer Lopez as Grace McKenna

Directed by

• Oliver Stone
• John Ridley

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• Cast & crew
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A man heading to Vegas to pay off his gambling debt before the Russian mafia kills him is forced to stop in an Arizona town where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. A man heading to Vegas to pay off his gambling debt before the Russian mafia kills him is forced to stop in an Arizona town where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. A man heading to Vegas to pay off his gambling debt before the Russian mafia kills him is forced to stop in an Arizona town where everything that can go wrong does go wrong.

• Oliver Stone
• John Ridley
• Jennifer Lopez
• 247 User reviews
• 95 Critic reviews
• 54 Metascore
• 1 win & 2 nominations

Top cast 22

• Bobby Cooper

• Grace McKenna

• Jake McKenna

• Sheriff Potter

• Boy in Grocery Store

• (as Ilia Volokh)
• (as Valery Nikolaev)

• (as Julie Haggerty)
• Short Order Cook
• (as Annie Mei-Ling Tien)

• Toby N. Tucker

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia When Jennifer Lopez's character (Grace McKenna) flashes back at the end of the film we see lots of photographs of her as a child. These photographs are actually photos from Jennifer Lopez's private collections of herself as a child.
• Goofs Not only is there a visible line attached to the vulture's leg in one scene, this vulture and all vultures shown in the movie are of a species that does not exist in the United States. There are a lot of those vultures flying around for a bird that doesn't live there. California condors were re-introduced in the wild in 1996.

Blind Man : Your lies are old but you tell them pretty good.

• Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Kiss the Girls/The Matchmaker/U Turn/The Locusts/Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)
• Soundtracks It's A Good Day Written by Peggy Lee and Dave Barbour Performed by Peggy Lee Courtesy of Capitol Records under license from EMI-Capitol Music Special Markets

User reviews 247

• Aug 8, 1999
• How long is U Turn? Powered by Alexa
• October 3, 1997 (United States)
• United States
• Florence, Arizona, USA
• Phoenix Pictures
• Illusion Entertainment Group
• Clyde Is Hungry Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $19,000,000 (estimated)
• Oct 5, 1997

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 5 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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October 3, 1997 'U-Turn': A Darker Shade of Noir, From Oliver Stone Forum Join a Discussion on Movies By JANET MASLIN -Turn" is a steamy film noir anomaly in the never dull, ever-checkered career of Oliver Stone. Shot in a hurry (42 days) with a big cast and a smallish budget ($20 million), it tells a relatively unencumbered tale of greed, lust and the usual etceteras, a story in which sooner or later someone is bound to offer a business proposition with the caveat: "It's gotta look like an accident." However simply he approaches this familiar milieu, Stone winds up treating his story's sin-soaked connivers the way Francis Ford Coppola treated vampires. Neither of them is really capable of anything plain. So "U-Turn" becomes a showcase for the filmmaker's terrific arsenal of visual mannerisms and free-association imagery. This can indeed be dizzying, what with unexpected angles, sudden shifts in points of view, frequent high-voltage surprises and all the fangs, beaks and antlers that illustrate the film's basic premise. ("Human beings ain't just human, you know. They got animals livin' inside them too.") Indeed, Stone's gleeful experiment is often as liberating for the viewer as it must have been for him. But his film, a long, decadent wallow that cheerfully includes events like a fight with golf club, ax and Indian spear, does finally prove that it's possible to leap off the deep end even on very dry land. Energized by obvious spontaneity and featuring the inspired visual efforts of many longtime Stone collaborators, as well as the zesty addition of an Ennio Morricone score, "U-Turn" adapts the novel "Stray Dogs," by John Ridley (who wrote the screenplay), into a parade of colorful lowlifes. The filmmaker describes the genre as "scorpions in a bucket." In this universe it's better to be a stranger in town than one of the thrill-starved locals, that's for sure. So into dusty little Superior, Ariz., come Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn) and his Mustang and his sunglasses, none of them looking to stick around. Unfortunately, the car winds up at the garage owned by sneaky Darrell (Billy Bob Thornton, having a ball behind grizzled whiskers and bad teeth), and Bobby winds up as Superior's latest catch. Barely has he strode down Main Street (and Only Street) when Bobby is bewitched by Grace McKenna (Jennifer Lopez). She invites him home, where it develops that Grace has a husband and a problem. They are one and the same: Jake McKenna, played by Nick Nolte with a hard Lee Marvin look and a few grudges of his own. When not busy being played for a fool by one McKenna or the other, Bobby sees the rest of the sights, including Powers Boothe as the sheriff and a heavily disguised Jon Voight as a blind Indian sage. ("You know, we're all eyes in the same head," says the wise man. "Everything is everything. Everything is nothing too.") Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix play a giddy ingenue and her amusingly unhinged boyfriend. "Is everybody in this town on drugs?" Bobby is eventually prompted to ask. Maybe not, but somebody has spent an awful lot of time experiencing subliminal flashes and contemplating bleached skulls. The film captures that outlook with Robert Richardson's extremely versatile cinematography, some of it given a nicely dated and tawdry edge with the use of reversal film stock, the kind used in military training films. Editing by Hank Corwin and Thomas J. Nordberg avoids the hysterical pitch of "Natural Born Killers" while still keeping the audience off balance. Set decoration is playful too, including signs ("How Long Will You Live?") and kitschy objects that comment on the increasingly lurid action. It's best not to read too much into these or anything else. PRODUCTION NOTES U-TURN Rating: "U-Turn" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes sex and murder, both graphic. Directed by Oliver Stone; written by John Ridley, based on his book "Stray Dogs"; director of photography, Robert Richardson; edited by Hank Corwin and Thomas J. Nordberg; music by Ennio Morricone; production designer, Victor Kempster; produced by Dan Halsted and Clayton Townsend; released by Tri-Star Pictures. Running time: 125 minutes. Cast: Sean Penn (Bobby Cooper), Jennifer Lopez (Grace McKenna), Nick Nolte (Jake McKenna), Powers Boothe (Sheriff Potter), Claire Danes (Jenny), Joaquin Phoenix (Toby N. Tucker), Billy Bob Thornton (Darrell) and Jon Voight (Blind Man).

A sun-baked film noir related in the style of a demented fever dream, "U-Turn" lives almost as dangerously as its wild characters, and gets away with it. Exceedingly raw, imaginative, daring and energized, this rare straight genre exercise by Oliver Stone is loaded with twisted motives, brazen amorality, double dealing, incestuous relationships, subversive intent and hilariously surreal asides. The sophisticated effrontery with which the director presents this blunt and murderous tale will clearly be off-putting to more genteel viewers, but savvy audiences should embrace this as something sufficiently different from the standard bloodlust melodrama to give it a potent run at the box office, with fine results in store internationally and on cable/vid. With its desolate Western setting, grungy characters, liberal gunplay and jagged, hallucinatory visuals, pic quickly puts one in mind of Stone's "Natural Born Killers." But not only does the new effort feature far less, and less explicit, carnage, it has been stripped of any apparent sociopolitical import, the better to look at the contorted antics of its anguished principal characters from a boldly original, almost absurdly comic perspective. Adapted by young crime writer John Ridley from his novel "Stray Dogs," tale makes use of one of the most standard conventions of classic noir, that of a hapless fellow becoming ensnared in a treacherous web of passion and deceit, with an alluring black widow spider at the center of it. Buffs will have fun noting the echoes not only of such noir landmarks as "Detour" and "Out of the Past," but of Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil," various Fritz Lang studies of fatalistic deterministism and, above all, King Vidor's operatic lust-in-the-dust oater "Duel in the Sun."

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Jump-cutting and free-associating to its heart’s content, film lands two-bit criminal Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn) in God-forsaken Superior, Ariz., with an overheated engine. Leaving his old red Mustang convertible with malevolently impudent garage mechanic Darrell (Billy Bob Thornton, hilariously rendering the definitive take on white trash), Bobby bops through downtown, where he succeeds in picking up Grace (Jennifer Lopez), a looker in a tight red dress who invites the drifter up to her well-appointed home.

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Some heavy flirtation has just led to first base when who should walk in but Grace’s gruff husband, Jake (Nick Nolte), who promptly decks the transgressor and kicks him out of his house. Moments later, however, Jake picks the bloodied Bobby up on the road and asks him if he’d care to murder his wife for a price.

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Bobby may be a lawbreaker at times, but he’s never killed anyone and gives Jake the brush-off. However, when his bag containing thousands in cash, which he owes to a Russian criminal who clipped off two of his fingers, is blown to bits in an attempted robbery, Bobby is forced to go back to Jake and accept his offer.

In an edgy, high-wire sequence above a deep ravine, Bobby doesn’t know until the last second whether he’s going to push Grace over the side or ravish her. Choosing the latter, and learning a few things about the woman’s tormented past in the process, Bobby soon becomes Grace’s willing accomplice in turning the tables and doing in the beastly Jake, whose private stash of $200,000 would come in handy in setting the pair up in a new life.

Attempting the deed, however, is a difficult and grisly matter, one complicated for Bobby by continuing hassles with the grotesque Darrell and local sheriff Potter (Powers Boothe), the badgering of a wise-ass “blind Indian” (Jon Voight) and repeated assaults by town tough-guy Toby N. Tucker (Joaquin Phoenix), who imagines that Bobby is trying to make time with his tarty girlfriend (Claire Danes).

The climax truly hits “Duel in the Sun” pay dirt, with the surviving characters writhing around on the rocks in the presence of a couple of corpses while birds of prey hover expectantly.

The stylistic fun Stone has in dramatizing this crime of passion thoroughly revitalizes the well-worked genre. The piling on of coincidental adversity, humorous non sequitur inserts and jaunty, goofy music clearly positions Penn’s Bobby as a poor schmuck caught both comically and cosmically in a web of circumstance beyond his control. The underlining of the story’s elemental aspects, such as the frequent allusions to animals and base instincts, is also humorous and legitimately threatening.

The raw edge and incessant experimentation in the direction often puts one in mind of the exciting work done by new and contrary young filmmakers of the late ’60s, and could easily be mistaken for the work of an adventurous artist making his first or second film. Certainly few, if any, directors with as many films under their belts as Stone has is displaying this kind of stylistic urgency and restlessness, without the slightest speck of Hollywood complacency in evidence.

In addition to the accomplished daring of Robert Richardson’s ever-observant, sometimes whipping camerawork and Ennio Morricone’s half-comic, half-haunting score, which in its eccentric instrumentation is reminiscent of his great scores for Sergio Leone, there are enormous pleasures to be taken from the performances. Penn is outstanding as the beleaguered hero, the resourcefulness and quick-trigger aspects of his personality neatly fitting the needs of his often-cornered character. Lopez makes an ideal and yet somewhat uncommon femme fatale, an abused woman who manages to dish out quite a bit of abuse of her own before it’s all over; she also nicely accommodates the film’s late-in-the-game shift in its emotional center to Grace.

Grizzled, gravelly-voiced and seemingly outfitted with some rabbitlike buck teeth, Nolte gives a nasty performance of which the late Lee Marvin would have been rightly proud. Thornton is an outrageous delight, Voight has fun with his insolent sidewalk philosopher, and Phoenix brings slick gusto to his transparently thin-skinned bully.

• Production: A Sony Pictures Entertainment release from TriStar Pictures of a Phoenix Pictures presentation of an Illusion Entertainment Group production, in association with Clyde Is Hungry Films. Produced by Dan Halsted, Clayton Townsend. Executive producer, John Ridley. Co-producer, Richard Rutowski. Directed by Oliver Stone. Screenplay, John Ridley, based on his book "Stray Dogs
• Crew: Camera (Technicolor), Robert Richardson; editors, Hank Corwin, Thomas J. Nordberg; music, Ennio Morricone; executive music producer, Budd Carr; production design, Victor Kempster; art direction, Dan Webster; set decoration, Merideth Boswell; costume design, Beatrix Aruna Pasztor; sound (Dolby SR/SDDS), Gary Alper; associate producer, Bill Brown; assistant director, Seth Cirker; casting, Mary Vernieu. Reviewed at Todd-AO West screening room, Santa Monica, Aug. 27, 1997. (In Telluride Film Festival.) MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 125 MIN.
• With: Bobby Cooper ..... Sean Penn Jake McKenna ..... Nick Nolte Grace McKenna ..... Jennifer Lopez Sheriff Potter ..... Powers Boothe Jenny ..... Claire Danes Toby N. Tucker ..... Joaquin Phoenix Darrell ..... Billy Bob Thornton Blind Man ..... Jon Voight Biker #1 ..... Abraham Benrubi Flo ..... Julie Haggerty Ed ..... Bo Hopkins Mr. Arkady ..... Valery Nikolaev Sergei ..... Ilia Volokh Jamilla ..... Aida Linares Bus Station Clerk ..... Laurie Metcalf Girl in Bus Station ..... Liv Tyler

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Movie Review: 'U-Turn'

As the first Oliver Stone movie — or at least the first one since he became a great filmmaker — to gleefully dispense with sociopolitical significance, U-Turn (TriStar) is an overdue event, a chance for Stone to apply his hypnotic acid-trip-of-the-soul wizardry to something sexy and lowdown. Set in the kind of sunbaked and dilapidated 50-miles-from-nowhere hick town that looks like the backdrop for an apocalyptic beer commercial, the movie is a spectacularly scuzzy comedy of fate, a film noir that winks at you. The hero, Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn), is a gambler who has seen better days (his hand, we learn, has recently been separated from two of its fingers). Driving to Las Vegas, Bobby looks tough enough, with his suavely disheveled jet-black coif, his James Dean postures, and — what else could this man possibly drive? — his vintage red Mustang convertible. At the same time, the film lets us know that he’s basically a disreputable dog.

When Bobby’s car blows its radiator hose, he wheels it into Superior, Ariz., a mining village so cruddy and depressing it’s like Tijuana as a ghost town. The temperature is about a zillion degrees (sweat could be the local industry), and the sun isn’t the only thing that’s overheating. The moment Bobby arrives, bad voodoo seems to emanate from everywhere. It starts with the local mechanic, played — hilariously — by Billy Bob Thornton as a hostile pigpen slob (dirt is practically etched into his skin). This walking grease pit seems to take great delight in inconveniencing Bobby, and, in fact, the slyly sinister joke of the movie is that everything that happens to poor Bobby is, in essence, a form of karma: cosmic payback for his being a hustler and a lout. He’s a man with no loyalty — he’ll say anything to get what he wants — and now the world is refusing to show loyalty to him .

Wandering the streets, Bobby is assailed by such Twilight Zone locals as a blind but all-seeing Native American derelict (Jon Voight) and a dimply, down-home nymphet (Claire Danes) who keeps showing up to bat her eyelashes at him, tailed by her violent hulk of a boyfriend (Joaquin Phoenix, in a magnetic bit of sociopathic shtick). Is there a femme fatale? Do you even have to ask? Bobby catches the eye of Grace (Jennifer Lopez), a sultry beauty so cool and sleek she stands out from Superior like a glass of Dom Perignon atop a dunghill. He also meets Jake (Nick Nolte), her raging psycho of a husband. It’s soon unclear who wants to pay who to do away with whom. Nolte, looking like Tom Waits’ horror-movie cousin, leers and rasps and generally has a wild time playing the scummiest scumbag of his career.

The chain-of-disaster form of U-Turn is, by now, a genre all its own — call it Rube Goldberg noir. I’m speaking of such black comedies of entropic coincidence as After Hours and Red Rock West . Stone, drawing on Westerns from Duel in the Sun to Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia , infuses the genre with his dazzling gift for ambiguous poetic menace. The surprises in U-Turn aren’t simply the plot twists, which hinge on such merry subjects as incest; they’re the haunting flashes of dread, memory, and desire within the twists. Stone, working in the dense channel-surfing style of JFK and Natural Born Killers , makes every shot a jolt, a sliver of ominous perception.

The first two thirds of U-Turn is a rude, seductive head bender. But around the time it turns from day to night, the film begins to lose its tricky aura of borderline surreal mystery. It becomes another rigged, what-will-happen-next suspense game, and you begin to sense just how arbitrary the twists are. Stone was right to want to apply his gifts to a hip, throwaway thriller. By the end, though, he can’t resist inflating it to something larger — a blood opera of sadomasochistic love. Less, in this case, would have been more. B+

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U Turn (1997)

Directed by oliver stone.

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Description by Wikipedia

U Turn is a 1997 modern western neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Oliver Stone, and based on the book Stray Dogs by John Ridley. It stars Sean Penn, Billy Bob Thornton, Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight, Powers Boothe, Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes and Nick Nolte.

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U-Turn Review

24 Apr 1998

125 minutes

Having lost all sense of proportion with the over-inflated Nixon, Oliver Stone cuts back his budget and his post-NBK multimedia visuals to deliver a low-key, low-down, blacker-than-black comedy thriller. It's not the best film he's ever made, but certainly the best for a long while.

With more than a passing nod to John Dahl's Red Rock West, Stone's movie finds drifter Penn stuck in the arse-end of nowhere, his broken car in the garage, and two of his fingers seemingly missing.

What starts as a really bad day soon turns considerably worse under the frying temperatures of the noonday sun - deranged car mechanic Thornton won't give Penn his motor back, the local sheriff has his eye out for him, local vixen Lopez is on the tease, and her more-than-slightly possessive husband Nolte is none too chuffed with this new boy in town.

But soon, hubby is recruiting Penn to off the missus while she in turn is asking her newly bedded mate to do the same to hubby - who may well also be daddy (you know how these small towns are). Stone's direction seems generally reinvigorated by the reduced budget, with old Ollie out to prove his indie chops in inventive and often dazzling fashion. Having assembled an impressive cast, he's content to stand back and give them room to play, from the twisted humour of Thornton to the dark soul of Nolte to the luscious longings of Lopez. Penn, meanwhile, is superb - gradually falling apart through the course of the day, a man desperate to get out alive, with one eye on the road ahead and one on the buzzards circling above.

The plot does have obvious antecedents and Stone does betray himself with a few too many celeb cameos (just what is Liv Tyler doing standing in the back of that ticket office?). But for the most part, what you have here is a topnotch filmmaker getting back to basics and really delivering the goods.

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Film review: u-turn (1997).

Nigel Honeybone 09/24/2018 Cult Films , Film Reviews

REVIEW: Desert Noir may not be acknowledged as the most prominent cinema genre, but it remains one of the more interesting pop culture intersections where the western, the thriller, pulp fiction and road movie all spectacularly collide. Residing beneath the dusty surface of these coarse variations on human primitivism and alienation is a very old-fashioned morality fable like Detour (1945) or Red Rock West (1993), where the iconography of urban expressionism (blinking neon, wailing sirens, etc.) has been replaced with the call of the coyote, sun-bleached landscapes and roadkill.

Tags Billy Bob Thornton Claire Danes Jennifer Lopez Joaquin Phoenix John Ridley Jon Voight Nick Nolte Oliver Stone Sean Penn U-Turn

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U-Turn Reviews

In the name of making the climax logical and believable, U-Turn takes a complete detour, making it yet another thriller filled with ‘been there, seen that’ elements.

Full Review | Nov 27, 2023

Overall, this mystery thriller that deals with the consequences of traffic violations adds a topical and relevant element to the story while also acting as a useful reminder to always follow the rules of the road for your own and others' safety.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 27, 2023

There’s a twist you won't see coming, but by that time, the remake has missed the bus. It fails to reach its destination; maybe it took that very U-Turn that made the makers make this film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 27, 2023

Less of a remake, more of a car crash with Alaya F in the driver's seat.

Full Review | Jun 1, 2023

The film's story, in its insistence on keeping the focus on the leading lady, makes everyone else’s arcs sub-par. This results in a film unable to keep a hold on the viewer.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jun 1, 2023

Alaya F is immensely watchable as a journalist uncovering the truth about a deadly road in this yet another remake of a Kannada film.

Alaya F and the character she essays are, collectively, about the only bright spot in U-Turn.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 1, 2023

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U-Turn Movie Review

Director: Pawan Kumar

Cast: Samantha Akkineni, Rahul Ravindran, Bhoomika Chawla

Pawan Kumar's U Turn is a remake of his Kannada PSA-disguised-as-a-horror movie, and it contains many… U-turns. Let's begin with the ostensible leading man, crime reporter Aditya (Rahul Ravindran). He has a thing for Rachana (Samantha), the intern at his office. But she's the one who asks if he wants to have a cup of coffee. This is Rachana's movie. Aditya is the arm candy, the "love interest," reduced to wondering why she is not picking up his calls. When Rachana becomes the damsel in distress — long story, which we'll get into in a bit — you think Aditya's crime-reporting skills will save her. But then, he ends up in trouble, a dude in distress. She sets out to save him. This gender twist is a smart little U-turn.

Now for the long story, which begins in an auto. This scene between Rachana and her mother exists to establish that the mother is leaving on a trip, and Rachana will be alone for the rest of the film – and Pawan Kumar could have achieved this by simply having the mother wave goodbye as Rachana closed the door. But this autoride slyly introduces the road as a major character, and it gives the characters the opportunity to talk, and through this talk, we learn about Rachana, her family (there's a brother with visa problems), her mother's exasperation with her unmarried status (which lets us know she's single and available), her impulsive boldness (which makes her propose to the auto driver, and explains at least a few future actions), her determined and independent nature (which will explain, later, why she invites danger home)… And eventually, we will see that this mother-daughter scene  forms a loose parallel with scenes of another mother and daughter on the road. Pawan Kumar packs so much into this short stretch, it feels like the screenwriter's equivalent of the four-minute mile.

U Turn is a fair-enough outing (it may play better for those who haven't seen the original). But the intensity in the build-up isn't matched by the corny conclusion

But something feels off. The performances are fine, but the pacing always seems a beat or two behind. This gives the talky portions of the film an amateur-theatre vibe — though, thankfully, things get better once people start dying and Rachana is hauled to the police station. The cops (Adhi plays sub-inspector Nayak) want to know why she was hanging around the house of a murdered man — Rachana wants to know, too. What has all this got to do with the illegal U-turn motorists take on a busy road in Chennai? And what's with the U itself, the shape? The U in an "I Love U" text message. The U that the camera does at the beginning, first showing us an inverted  shot of a road (the sky is at the bottom half of the screen) and then righting itself.

U Turn is a fair-enough outing (it may play better for those who haven't seen the original). But the intensity in the build-up isn't matched by the corny conclusion, which — as I wrote in my review of the Kannada movie– feels like something Mahesh Bhatt would have written for an Emraan Hashmi horror franchise. For now, though, let's celebrate this time in Tamil cinema. After two Nayanthara-led hits in Kolamavu Kokila (crime / thriller / black comedy) and Imaikka Nodigal (serial-killer thriller) — we have another heroine-led film in a genre that's usually male-dominated, and where the protagonist could just as easily have been written as male. Three such films is not a pattern, merely coincidence. But here's hoping that this coincidence turns into a trend.

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U-Turn movie review: Samantha Akkineni owns a paranormal thriller that thrives on an interesting premise

U-Turn is not a regular whodunit but a well made paranormal thriller that moves at a rapid pace, with a stunning reveal in the climax.

U-Turn  is not a regular whodunit but a well made paranormal thriller that moves at a rapid pace, with a stunning reveal in the climax. It is the Tamil remake of the Kannada film with same title and director. It is a faithful remake but director Pawan Kumar makes one crucial change in the climax which makes the murder mystery puzzle slightly more believable. Samantha Akkineni owns the film. She is fantastic in a very difficult role as the pivot around which the story revolves.

Rachana (Samantha) is an intern at a newspaper (the film was partially shot at the Times of India office in Hyderabad).  She takes to the crime beat and wants to impress her senior editor Aditya (Rahul Ravindran) and does an investigative story on the Velachery flyover in Chennai. She finds that each day, some motorists move blocks that partition the road just to take a short cut through a U-turn. Of course, those who unlawfully take the U-Turn do not move them back and the blocks leads to many accidents. A homeless man who lives under the flyover and Rachana’s contact takes down the vehicle numbers of those who violate the traffic rule and take the dangerous ‘U-turn’. She tracks them one by one and discovers that all of them appear to have committed suicide on the day they broke the traffic rule . Rachna is taken into police custody and initially, the police suspect her but later, a sympathetic officer Nayak (Aadhi), joins her as he feels that something is  fishy. Are the deaths connected to each other and to the flyover? Why do they all die on the day they illegally moved those blocks?    And out of the blue there comes an intriguing link which connects all the “suicides” and endangers Rachna’s life. There are plenty of twists and turns that keep you hooked till the very last scene. The director, at the end of the film, says his story is based on real-life incidents. What impresses most is Nikketh Bommireddy’s camera, which gives the film its eerie feel, supported by the background score by Poorna Chandra Tejaswi. Pawan has a clever storyline as he harps on karma, the underlining theme of the film. It also delivers a hard-hitting message on how important it is to obey traffic rules. The film has its weakness as it oscillates between the real and the implausible; making it difficult for the screenplay to bridge the gap, especially in some key portions during the second half. The paranormal activities are tough to swallow. The film works largely due to Samantha’s performance. Her expression of fear in the climax makes for easily one of the best scenes. And giving her ample support is Rahul Ravindran as the senior crime editor and Aadhi as the cop. Pawan has pacakaged U-Turn well as a neat thriller which plays more on the latent human fear of the unknown.       

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U-Turn Movie Review: Alaya F drives with caution but screenplay makes the ride bumpy

Alaya f's film, u-turn, is streaming from today on zee5. is the supernatural thriller worth a watch read the review to find out..

Listen to Story

• U-Turn is now streaming on Zee 5.
• It stars Alaya F in the lead.
• The film has been directed by Arif Khan.

Release Date: 28 Apr, 2023

I have often wondered what the point of a scene-to-scene remake of a thriller is. Yes, there would be several people who might not have watched the original, but if you have (and chances are you will, thanks to OTT boom), then the entire experience would be marred. However, the 2016 Kannada film, U-Turn, was so novel and well-made that the supernatural thriller was remade six times! This also includes a Sinhala and Filipino remake.

Director Arif Khan was well aware that the number of people not aware of U-Turn would be just a handful. Also, the original or different remakes could not be removed from OTT. So, he did not opt for a copy-paste remake. Instead, what he tried doing was using the audience’s knowledge of the original and challenge it. So, the moment one thinks that they know what’s going to happen next, the twist will catch them unaware (which is what a thriller should be like). However, this also results in several inconsistencies throughout, discussing which might result in some major spoilers.

READ | U-Turn producer Ekta Kapoor feels ‘empowered female audience’ is making women-led films work

The story follows Radhika (Alaya F), an intern at a news organisation who is investigating road accidents on a flyover due to people making sudden and unauthorised u-turns by removing blocks and not placing them back. She takes the help of a beggar who sits near the flyover to track the lawbreakers. However, within 24 hours of her finding the details, those at fault end up dead- by killing themselves. Inspector Arjun (Priyanshu Painyulli) investigates the case and detains Radhika for questioning. However, people still end up dying and it starts to feel like there’s a supernatural cause to all the deaths. But is that so?

Watch the trailer here :

Alaya F delivers an earnest performance. There are elements of horror in the film, a genre that is super difficult. And that is where her performance falters. She is good in parts, but her performance remains average. Priyanshu Painyulli does not have too much meat in his role but gives a brilliant performance within whatever space he gets. Manu Rishi Chaddha, who plays Inspector Dhillon, also performs earnestly. However, the screenplay is what kind of ruins his performance.

The screenplay mars the experience in the film. With several loopholes and inconsistencies, it has some major flaws. Stock horror stuff (read creaking doors and lights going off) is used for jump scares that fail miserably. This is the weakest element in the film for sure.

All in all, you can watch this film if you are craving a thriller, but do not keep your hopes sky high. It’s 2.5 out of 5 stars. Published By: Anindita Mukhopadhyay Published On: Apr 28, 2023 --- ENDS --- ALSO READ | Tejasswi Prakash, Ankita Lokhande, Ekta Kapoor and others attend Alaya F's U Turn screening. See pics