DREAMLAND / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: BRUCE MCDONALD / SCREENPLAY: TONY BURGESS, PATRICK WHISTLER / STARRING: STEPHEN MCHATTIE, HENRY ROLLINS, JULIETTE LEWIS, LISA HOULE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
As Canadian genre movies go, the Bruce McDonald-Stephen McHattie paring is akin to Scorsese and De Niro. Both reached career highs over a decade ago with Pontypool, a zombie film in which the perfunctory infection is carried by language. This surrealistic streak appears throughout most of McDonald’s career, for better or for worse. A competent storyteller, his movies are always watchable, but the filmmaker often fails to balance his freak flag with most conventional narrative elements. It’s the same story with Dreamland.
Much like Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks!, Stephen McHattie pulls double duty for no good reason. He is Johnny, a hired gun for a two-bit mobster named Hercules (Rollins), the manager of the filthiest club in all town, the Al Qaeda. Hercules’ decision to start catering to wealthy paedophiles doesn’t sit well with Johnny, who turns on his employer. McHattie also plays a trumpet player addicted to smack, hired to play at the wedding of a vampire and his child bride (hey, a gig is a gig). Inevitably, the stories intersect – the musician runs afoul of Hercules – leading to burst of violence, random philosophical arguments and very amusing comic banter between Hercules and the bloodsucker.
A noir film at heart (there’s no older tale than the criminal gunning for salvation), Dreamland packs enough weirdness to be different, but not enough to cross to David Lynch territory. The weathered, stupendous McHattie is excellent in both roles: The actor invests each character with a different kind of pathos and even delivers a touching version of Annie Lennox’s I Saved the World Today. Henry Rollins, who has been playing the heavy for a couple of decades now, gives his morally compromised character a vulnerability and sense of humour that prevents audiences from hating him.
The main problem with Dreamland is that all these elements - the quirky characters, the grade school goons, Juliette Lewis – add up to nothing. The story is not all that substantial, and the political commentary is too broad to take seriously. Luckily, at ninety minutes, the parade of oddities and weirdness is intriguing enough to carry the viewer to the end.
