‘Violence’ a Complicated Film About Modern Life

By the time Wim Wenders’ audacious and seductive “The End of Violence” is over, its title has changed meaning, signifying not the elimination of violence but its cumulative effect. As complex as it is beautiful, it has echoes of “1984” and “The Conversation” and offers a shrewdly observed panorama of contemporary L.A. in general and Hollywood in particular.

“The End of Violence” has a large and distinctive cast; low-key yet stunning cinematography by Pascal Rabaud; a lovely, languorous Ry Cooder score, one of the year’s best; and the soundtrack boasts a clutch of wonderful newly commissioned work by such artists as Tom Waits, Los Lobos, a duet by U2 and Sinead O’Connor, and a duet by Michael Stipe and Vic Chesnutt.

“The End of Violence” may be an impressive and even satisfying achievement for Wenders aficionados, but it is also extraordinarily demanding for a major studio release. In its complicated plot, it is a thriller. But it is first and foremost a moody, contemplative European-style art film by a master of the New German Cinema movement who has always been fascinated by American pop culture.

Best known today for his surreal “Wings of Desire” and its sequel, “Faraway, So Close!,” Wenders has already made two memorable American films, “Hammett” and “Paris, Texas.”

In “The End of Violence,” a brusque, hard-driving Hollywood producer, Michael Max (Bill Pullman), has a film currently shooting and a beautiful wife (Andie MacDowell) he seriously neglects. His loyal, conscientious secretary (Rosalind Chao) tells him that he has received a hefty tome via e-mail on a new surveillance system, but he has no time to look at it. It apparently has been sent to him by a NASA-trained FBI surveillance expert, Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne), he met briefly at an electronics convention.

Meanwhile, Ray is holed up in the Griffith Planetarium setting up this breakthrough surveillance system that allows for constant observation of L.A.’s city streets. (It involves hidden cameras installed all over L.A. streets at what must be an astronomical cost.) Ray’s boss (Daniel Benzali) intends it to speed up crime response 200%. He remarks, “It could mean the end of violence as we know it.”

Because Ray is beginning to have misgivings about the surveillance system in its Big-Brother-is-watching-you implications, he reached out, it would seem, to Mike in the belief that someone outside the FBI should know about it. Mike is subsequently amused that, as a ruthless Hollywood type, he would be entrusted with such vital information.

The crux of Wenders and writer Nicholas Klein’s plot, which requires at times leaps of faith, is that there is a mind-boggling aspect of the surveillance system that Ray does not know about--that is, until, by the long arm of coincidence, the system saves the life of Mike, who is in danger of losing it at the hands of a pair of buffoonish crooks (Pruitt Taylor-Vince, John Diehl) intent on stealing his Mercedes. Remembering his secretary’s memo on the e-mailed surveillance material, Mike winds up laying low and is given shelter and work by some gardeners (Enrique Castillo, Sal Lopez and Ulises Cuadra) led by a kindly patriarch (Henry Silva).

That all this just sets the film in motion suggests how intricate “The End of Violence” is. While in hiding, Pullman has a chance to think about his life and character, to realize what an SOB he has become and to discover that change within individuals is the only way society can be transformed, as idealistic as that seems. Wenders and Klein come up with amusing commentary on the workings of Hollywood, and there is a consideration of how so many peoples’ lives are affected by violence in all its forms, including movies.

As “The End of Violence” unfolds in all its implications and permutations, it involves us with an extraordinary number and range of individuals, all of them engagingly played, although MacDowell seems out of her element as a woman who evolves into the hard, self-absorbed type of individual her missing husband had become.

Among those making vivid impressions are Traci Lind as a stuntwoman with acting ambitions; Loren Dean as a shrewd, ambitious young cop attracted to Lind; K. Todd Freeman as an opportunistic film composer; KCRW-FM’s Chris Douridas as Ray’s assistant; Marisol Padilla Sanchez as a new planetarium cleaning woman; Frederic Forrest (who played the title role of “Hammett”) as a veteran cop; Nicole Parker as a challenging poet; and most especially director Sam Fuller as Ray’s frail but feisty father. Singer Sam Phillips pops up briefly, and you can try to spot singer Meshell Ndegeocello.

Although “The End of Violence” is probably too complicated for its own good, it is clearly the work of a major visionary artist in whom it is always possible to recognize truths about the lives we live--a filmmaker who for once doesn’t exploit violence as he protests it. It would be terrific to see it on a double bill with Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts” or Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Zabriskie Point.”

* MPAA rating: R, for language. Times guidelines: The film is too intense and complicated for children.

‘The End of Violence’

Bill Pullman: Michael Max

Andie MacDowell: Paige Max

Gabriel Byrne: Ray Bering

Loren Dean: Doc

Traci Lind: Cat Daniel

Daniel Benzali: Phelps

K. Todd Freeman: Six O One

An MGM release of a CIBY 2000 presentation of a Ciby Pictures/Road Movies/Kintop Pictures co-production. Director Wim Wenders. Producers Deepak Nayar, Wenders, Nicholas Klein. Executive producers Jean-Francois Fonlupt. Screenplay by Klein; from a story by Klein & Wenders. Cinematographer Pascal Rabaud. Editor Peter Przygodda. Production and costume designer Patricia Norris. Music Ry Cooder. Set decorator Leslie Morales. Running time: 2 hours, 3 minutes.

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* Exclusively at the Westside Pavilion, 10800 W. Pico Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 475-0202, and the Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 848-3500.