MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Equinox’: Stunning Treat That Explores Dual Natures

Does every wimp dream of being a gangster? And are gangsters wimps with guns and an attitude? In Alan Rudolph’s dreamy, sinuous “Equinox” (Laemmle’s Sunset 5), Matthew Modine shakes us up in a double role that spins both sides of this coin. Modine plays a pair of twins separated at birth: one who grows up good but impotent, the other virile and bad.

Like Timothy Hutton’s two sides in “The Dark Half,” these two “selves” are dark and light, yin and yang: the “good” Henry Petosa bumbling through his futile routine as an introverted mechanic, while “bad” killer-winner Freddy Ace rakes in the chips as driver and silken torpedo for the local mob.

“Equinox” is not exactly a cautionary fable or psychological study, and it’s certainly not a conventional thriller. More obviously, it’s a film noir fairy tale, a beautifully articulated jazz rhapsody of a movie, full of stunning imagery and daffy jokes. In it, Rudolph plays around with the thriller form and the themes of duality and good/evil, using the plot to comment on alienation, romantic loss, the emptiness and corruption of modern life. By now an expert at this oddball subgenre, he is freely embellishing the notes, just like a good sax man noodling on “Body and Soul” or “Solitude.”

Rudolph keeps weaving together the two stories: while the twins pass each other on parallel tracks and a sort of private eye, Tyra Ferrell as the inquisitive morgue janitor Sonya, tracks them down. Henry quails behind a double-locked apartment door, going shy with the sprightly hooker down the hall (recent Oscar winner Marisa Tomei in a juicy turn), and courting the equally introverted poetry-loving civil servant Beverly (Lara Flynn Boyle). Meanwhile, cold-as-ice Freddy kills without a qualm, and treats his sleek blond wife, Sharon (Lori Singer), with distant, hard-edged cool.

Each has a buddy and a father figure: Henry’s twitchy pal Russell (Kevin O’Connor) and his barmy vaudevillian stepdad, Pete (M. Emmett Walsh); Freddy’s one-armed, psycho cohort Richie Nudd and his super-rich mob-man boss Paris (Fred Ward). The two even hang out in the same Italian ristorante--Henry eats there, Freddy is shaking it down--while, never, for most of the film meeting or seeing each other.

But since the film deals with the equivalent of “equinox,” the day when darkness and light are equal, a reckoning is obviously imminent.

Rudolph sets “Equinox” in the mythical city of Empire--actually Minnesota’s Twin Cities--which Rudolph, designer Steven Legler and the remarkable cinematographer Elliot Davis (“The Moderns,” “King of the Hill”) refashion into a drizzly evil wonderland.

At the center, Modine, though he may be pushing the “nerd” button a little heavily, gives us the dark and light sides with wit and passion, irony and deep emotion. As an actor, he hits his own equinox, balances the role effortlessly. And, as filmmaker, Rudolph once more takes us into those smoky, lyrical, mesmerizingly daft realms of which only he seems the ace.

‘Equinox’

Matthew Modine: Henry Petosa/Freddy Ace

Lara Flynn Boyle: Beverly Franks

Fred Ward: Paris

Marisa Tomei: Rosie Copa

An SC Entertainment International presentation of a David Blocker production, released by I.R.S. Releasing. Director/Screenplay Alan Rudolph. Producer David Blocker. Executive Producers Nicolas Stiliadis, Syd Cappe, Sandy Stern. Cinematographer Elliot Davis. Editor Michael Ruscio. Costumes Sharen Davis. Production design Steven Legler. Art director Randye Ericksen. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (language, violence, sexuality).