U Turn (1997)

59% of critics liked it
(49 reviews)
58% of users liked it
(30,146 ratings)

Oliver Stone directed this John Ridley screenplay adapted from Ridley's novel Stray Dogs. A drifter (Sean Penn) eludes Las Vegas collection agents and arrives in a small town where he decides to linger after his car has a breakdown. Here he gets involved with the locals, including an unhappily… More Oliver Stone directed this John Ridley screenplay adapted from Ridley's novel Stray Dogs. A drifter (Sean Penn) eludes Las Vegas collection agents and arrives in a small town where he decides to linger after his car has a breakdown. Here he gets involved with the locals, including an unhappily married couple -- a businessman (Nick Nolte) and his seductive, femme-fatale wife (Jennifer Lopez). A trailer trash teen (Claire Danes) also approaches him in an effort to get away from her abusive boyfriend (Joaquin Phoenix). Tensions in the town escalate, eventually leading to murder. Stone wanted to change the title from U-Turn back to Stray Dogs but encountered a problem with Akira Kurosawa, who felt it was too similar to his detective classic, Stray Dog (1949) with Toshiro Mifune. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: R, 2 hr. 5 min.
Directed By: Oliver Stone
Written By: John Ridley
Genres: Drama, Action & Adventure, Mystery & Suspense, Comedy

In Theaters: Oct 3, 1997 Wide
On DVD: Mar 31, 1998
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Critic Reviews

Todd McCarthy, Variety
The stylistic fun Stone has in dramatizing this crime of passion thoroughly revitalizes the well-worked genre.
Rick Groen, Globe and Mail
It's a disappointing ride.
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
It's so empty emotionally it's difficult to see what the point is, unless it's the celebration of emptiness, an aim that has become so familiar recently it hardly seems worth the trouble everyone has gone to.
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
It demonstrates a filmmaker in complete command of his craft and with little control over his impulses.
Janet Maslin, New York Times
U-Turn becomes a showcase for the filmmaker's terrific arsenal of visual mannerisms and free-association imagery.
Jeff Millar, Houston Chronicle
Stone has stretched this rubber band past the point where it should snap into parody, but it still holds the shape of a rubber band.
Blake French, Filmcritic.com
It's a feast for the senses, as long as you have a strong stomach.
Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com
This long, strange trip is fun but aimless.
Donald J. Levit, ReelTalk Movie Reviews
Viewers who don't need depth and can ignore technique overkill along with social critique nonsense, should enjoy the bumpy ride offered by 'U Turn.'
Geoff Andrew, Time Out
Penn turns in a crisp, unfussy comic performance, Lopez vamps like a scorpion in heat, Nolte sustains a pretty good John Huston impression, and Thornton is mighty peculiar as the mechanic from hell.
Robin Clifford, Reeling Reviews
One of Stone's best narrative, and thought-provoking, efforts to date.
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
A bad trip flick.
Dragan Antulov, rec.arts.movies.reviews
Much longer and tiresome to the audience than it should have been.
Margaret A. McGurk, Cincinnati Enquirer
Perplexing in the extreme.
Kevin N. Laforest, Montreal Film Journal
With brilliant photography and inventive camerawork, Stone gives a really interesting feel to the story.
Ed Scheid, Boxoffice Magazine
U-Turn is fast-paced throughout, with unexpected bursts of twisted humor among the bloody closeups of beatings, shootings and mutilation.
Pablo Villaca, Cinema em Cena
Observar os 'truques' de Oliver Stone é, por si só, diversão mais do que suficiente.
Gary Susman, Boston Phoenix
U-Turn is just your basic film noir, only with all the walloping, bravura technique that Stone brings to the similarly far-fetched premises of his overtly political films.
James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk
a mostly wasted effort in exploiting a well-tread genre

Read all 19 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Conner R

An amazing Neo-Noir/Western that's almost impossible to not enjoy on at least some level. The story is incredibly well-written and the characters are perfectly twisted. Sean Penn delivers a great performance as Bobby Cooper, in debt and in need of a break. There's also soe… More
An amazing Neo-Noir/Western that's almost impossible to not enjoy on at least some level. The story is incredibly well-written and the characters are perfectly twisted. Sean Penn delivers a great performance as Bobby Cooper, in debt and in need of a break. There's also soe great supporting performances from Billy Bob Thorton, Nick Nolte and Joaquin Phoenix to name a few. It's very much the same kind of irony that is present in most Noirs, that you never get off easy. It's also one of the best shot Oliver Stone movies, but that tends to be the case with every single one of his movies. I loved the use of over-exposure and 16mm film every once in a while.
Anthony L

Underrated film, it?s one of my favourite Stone pictures!
Chris W

Lurid and Excessive. These two words perfectly describe this film. They also perfectly describe Stone's earlier film Natural Born Killers. Where they differ is that NBK is brilliant, and this is just messy. The same problems that plague the film also plagued the source material.… More
Lurid and Excessive. These two words perfectly describe this film. They also perfectly describe Stone's earlier film Natural Born Killers. Where they differ is that NBK is brilliant, and this is just messy. The same problems that plague the film also plagued the source material. Obviously the fact that John Ridley wrote both the book and the script has something to do with this, and that's very unfortunate. I wanted to like both of them, and became disappointed. Had the story not dragged, and had things been played straight (instead of experimental), then maybe things could have turned out much, much better. However, the performances are really good, despite the fact that they, like everything else, are excessive and over the top. I did like that it was a genre film though, but I wish that the entertainment value outweighed the problems.
Michael S

Oliver Stone does Lynchian-Peckinpah, and the results are suprisingly good.
Nani V

Everyone was always so damn sweaty!
Tsubaki S

Acid fun, gets annoying towards the end.
Al S

Worst fucking movie of all time ever
Saskia D

Billy Bob haha.
xGary X

Oliver Stone turns his hand from politics to ripping off Quentin Tarantino, and the result is incoherent, nasty and uninvolving. A great cast is wasted trying to breathe life into a bunch of self-conciously oddball cardboard cut-outs and it's all so meandering and unstructured it… More
Oliver Stone turns his hand from politics to ripping off Quentin Tarantino, and the result is incoherent, nasty and uninvolving. A great cast is wasted trying to breathe life into a bunch of self-conciously oddball cardboard cut-outs and it's all so meandering and unstructured it totally fails to maintain the interest despite the sensationalist subject matter. A total misfire.
danny d

dirty and completely off the wall, but i was entertained by this flick in some ways.
Michael G

Amazing and trippy. A lot of incredible supporting performances.
James A

Jlo gets worked hard and mean.
Jeffrey M

Being part Twin Peaks, Deliverance, and Basic Instinct, U Turn is one crazy ass, random movie, with plenty of flaws. But I couldn't help but enjoy the ride. An interesting moment in Oliver Stone's overall brilliant career (Alexander notwithstanding).
Joey N

Oliver Stone does incredibly effective work here, but that might not always be a good thing, considering the source material. Sean Penn (who is really fantastic, btw) is stuck in a middle-of-nowhere Arizona town that's like a nightmarish fun house. But at points i was as… More
Oliver Stone does incredibly effective work here, but that might not always be a good thing, considering the source material. Sean Penn (who is really fantastic, btw) is stuck in a middle-of-nowhere Arizona town that's like a nightmarish fun house. But at points i was as frustrated as Sean, but I stuck with the movie anyways. Sean Penn's scenes with Claire Danes are by far the funniest. Juaquin Pheonix and Bily Bob Thorton's chacters are easily the most annoying. I had mixed feelings about Jennifer Lopez (who looks really great in this, for the record) at first, but after a certain twist, she comes into her own and we realize the role fits her like a glove. Speaking of twists, there are so many that the plot is truly unpredictable. You won't know what's going to happen next. The final third of the film abadons all the annoying stuff before, and suddenly becomes wickedly entertaining. This is a wild, nasty ride.
Adam M

Offbeat thriller from Oliver Stone. A drifter(Sean penn) manages to escape the clutches of a group of heavy's he owes money to when he drives randomly into a small town called superior. He manages to upset a few people along the way, including the local mechanic(Billy Bob… More
Offbeat thriller from Oliver Stone. A drifter(Sean penn) manages to escape the clutches of a group of heavy's he owes money to when he drives randomly into a small town called superior. He manages to upset a few people along the way, including the local mechanic(Billy Bob Thornton), the local wannabe hardman(Joquin Phoenix) and the big businessman with the hot wife(Nick Nolte and Jennifer Lopez). There are plenty of twists and turns along the way with lots of betrayal and some murder as the drifters involvement with the hot wife gets him into all sorts of trouble which is not something he needs as he's got gangsters after him and it seems his car will never be fixed! Threre are some dark laughs to be had too which turns out to be a good thing as U Turn drags on a bit to long which is a shame as this has a great cast, the above as well as cameos from Claire Danes, Powers Boothe and Liv Tyler to. Jennifer Lopez and Sean Penn are great. This was Lopez before she went all J-LO and started doing dodgy rom-coms and Penn is as dependable as ever. A good film though, a bit of an accquired taste maybe, thats let down a bit by the overlong running time.
Sarah P

I thought this was a great film. I love how it centers on basically one to two days and one setting, but how so much happens. The ending made it all worth it.
Ivan D

"U Turn" consists of automatic ingredients of a neo-noir: Lost protagonists, femme fatales, and crazy characters. Oliver Stone, still in the mood for the manic visuals of "Natural Born Killers", created the film to look like a cheap Z-grade film. The performances… More
"U Turn" consists of automatic ingredients of a neo-noir: Lost protagonists, femme fatales, and crazy characters. Oliver Stone, still in the mood for the manic visuals of "Natural Born Killers", created the film to look like a cheap Z-grade film. The performances were all great, but again, what negative thing would you expect from an ensemble cast with the likes of Jon Voight, Joaquin Phoenix, and Nick Nolte for starters. Sean Penn was amazingly delirious in this film, able to embody a less-than-moral man, but one can't help but mysteriously be fascinated and empathize with the character. Even Jennifer Lopez was surprisingly good here. Jon Voight's character, the blind man, appears to be the craziest person in the eyes of Superior inhabitants, but in fact, he is the sanest man in the film, able to weigh decisions that the main characters could not. Oliver Stone is a filmmaker with many detractors, but to take a break from big-budget projects and briefly settle to a small, but great production was very admirable on its own. "U Turn" can appear as a double feature with John Dahl's "Red Rock West", two noirs for the new generation.
alan j

solid performances...mildly palatable....thanks to the attractiveness of the leads...decent script..simply tends to drag in parts...
Lee K

I love oliver stone's films this was a little weirder then im used to from him but i am also a huge fan of sean penn so i won on both counts.
Leo L

Fantastic!