MOVIE REVIEW : New Pulp City : In ‘Denver,’ a Gangsters’ Tale Is Told With Style, Attitude--and Violence

“Do they still have gangsters?” the beautiful Dagney asks Jimmy the Saint, trying to figure out who or what he is. “Say ‘You dirty rat.”

Jimmy can’t handle the classic James Cagney line, but it’s the only time that words fail him. A rhapsodic talker and sincere Lothario, Jimmy, like all the other characters in “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead,” is a wizard with language. Not exactly ordinary English either, but a wacky kind of pumped-up slang laced with mysterious, evocative phrases such as “buckwheats” and “boat drinks” and “give it a name.”

More than its own language, “Denver’s” tyro screenwriter Scott Rosenberg and first-time director Gary Fleder have created their own raucous and sentimental universe, a world that takes traditional gangster themes of loyalty and living by a code and twists them in dark and comic ways. Moviegoers who can make it past “Denver’s” excessive violence--no small thing--and get on this film’s off-center wavelength will find a grave noir comedy heavy with romantic regret, a cocky piece of work that flaunts its style and attitude and dares you not to be impressed.

Most impressed were the dozen or so excellent performers, from Andy Garcia and Gabrielle Anwar as Jimmy and Dagney to Jack Warden as the film’s bluff narrator and Christopher Walken as the terrifying crime lord known simply as the Man With the Plan, none of whom could resist the heft and distinctiveness of the characters Rosenberg created.

Even in this impressive group Treat Williams stands out for the bravado of his performance as unstable hoodlum Critical Bill, so named because he leaves everyone he meets in critical condition. A mortuary driver introduced using a corpse as a punching bag (“I haven’t touched a live person in years,” he boasts), Critical Bill has a guileless, almost boyish quality that coats his psychopathic actions with an eerie calm. It is a tasty character and Williams makes just as much of it as John Travolta did in a similar career-reviving turn in “Pulp Fiction.”

Denver’s story revolves around Jimmy the Saint, a former seminarian who first soured on the church and then on crime. Now he hangs out in a malt shop called the Thick ‘n Rich and runs a dubious video operation called Afterlife Advice (“Just Because They’re Gone Doesn’t Mean They Can’t Guide”) in which dying parents record timeless advice for their survivors.

But Jimmy’s situation is about to change. He spots Dagney, a smiling ski instructor, across a crowded bar and pursues her with eccentric lines like “Girls who glide need guys who make them thump.” When Jimmy’s habitual secretiveness is added in, Dagney doesn’t know whether to be baffled or impressed.

Jimmy is secretive because, much against his will, the all-powerful Man With the Plan has come back into his life. Turned into a paraplegic by an attempted rub-out, the Man is the devil in a wheelchair, bitter but still powerful. He dotes on his son Bernard, and he insists that Jimmy put a scare into the new boyfriend of Bernard’s former girlfriend. “It’s just an action, not a piece of work,” he says, meaning no one is supposed to get hurt.

To do the job, Jimmy rounds up the usual gang of pals from the old days, except there is nothing usual about any of them. Aside from Critical Bill, there is Franchise (William Forsythe), a tattooed trailer park manager; the hot-tempered Easy Wind (Bill Nunn), and Pieces (Christopher Lloyd), a porno theater projectionist whose obscure disease causes pieces of his extremities to drop off at slight provocation.

Not surprisingly, things go wrong with the action, as they tend to do in movies like this, and the sinister Mister Shhh (Steve Buscemi) puts in an appearance. All at once Jimmy finds himself frantically trying to manage his fragile relationship with Dagney, look after his crew, and even straighten out the life of a trouble-prone hooker named Lucinda (Fairuza Balk).

Though “Denver’s” substance is familiar, it is flavored with the special piquant sauce Rosenberg’s screenplay and Fleder’s brisk direction provide. The actors, especially Garcia, also provide the charisma that helps propel the film over its occasional rough spots.

The hardest thing to take about “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” is its uncomfortable violence, its bloody shoot-outs and its horrific beatings. The shame of it is that, unlike films that have nothing but bloodshed going for them, “Denver” doesn’t need the mayhem to attract a crowd. And that carnage may ultimately keep away the very moviegoers who could most appreciate its loopy, eccentric virtues.

* MPAA rating: R, for strong graphic violence and language, and for brief images of a sex film. Times guidelines: several extremely graphic beatings and shootings.

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‘Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead’

Andy Garcia: Jimmy the Saint

Christopher Walken: Man With the Plan

Gabrielle Anwar: Dagney

William Forsythe: Franchise

Treat Williams: Critical Bill

Christopher Lloyd: Pieces

Bill Nunn: Easy Wind

Released by Miramax Pictures. Director Gary Fleder. Producer Cary Woods. Executive producers Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Marie Cantin. Screenplay Scott Rosenberg. Cinematographer Elliot Davis. Editor Richard Marks. Costumes Abigail Murray. Production design Nelson Coates. Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes.

* In limited release for a one-week run.