u turn movie reviews

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A man heading to Vegas to pay off his gambling debt before the Russian mafia kills him is forced to stop in an Arizona town where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. A man heading to Vegas to pay off his gambling debt before the Russian mafia kills him is forced to stop in an Arizona town where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. A man heading to Vegas to pay off his gambling debt before the Russian mafia kills him is forced to stop in an Arizona town where everything that can go wrong does go wrong.

• Oliver Stone
• John Ridley
• Jennifer Lopez
• 247 User reviews
• 95 Critic reviews
• 54 Metascore
• 1 win & 2 nominations

Top cast 22

• Bobby Cooper

• Grace McKenna

• Jake McKenna

• Sheriff Potter

• Boy in Grocery Store

• (as Ilia Volokh)
• (as Valery Nikolaev)

• (as Julie Haggerty)
• Short Order Cook
• (as Annie Mei-Ling Tien)

• Toby N. Tucker

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia When Jennifer Lopez's character (Grace McKenna) flashes back at the end of the film we see lots of photographs of her as a child. These photographs are actually photos from Jennifer Lopez's private collections of herself as a child.
• Goofs Not only is there a visible line attached to the vulture's leg in one scene, this vulture and all vultures shown in the movie are of a species that does not exist in the United States. There are a lot of those vultures flying around for a bird that doesn't live there. California condors were re-introduced in the wild in 1996.

Blind Man : Your lies are old but you tell them pretty good.

• Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Kiss the Girls/The Matchmaker/U Turn/The Locusts/Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)
• Soundtracks It's A Good Day Written by Peggy Lee and Dave Barbour Performed by Peggy Lee Courtesy of Capitol Records under license from EMI-Capitol Music Special Markets

User reviews 247

• pfgpowell-1
• Apr 10, 2007
• How long is U Turn? Powered by Alexa
• October 3, 1997 (United States)
• United States
• Florence, Arizona, USA
• Phoenix Pictures
• Illusion Entertainment Group
• Clyde Is Hungry Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $19,000,000 (estimated)
• Oct 5, 1997

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 5 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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October 3, 1997 'U-Turn': A Darker Shade of Noir, From Oliver Stone Forum Join a Discussion on Movies By JANET MASLIN -Turn" is a steamy film noir anomaly in the never dull, ever-checkered career of Oliver Stone. Shot in a hurry (42 days) with a big cast and a smallish budget ($20 million), it tells a relatively unencumbered tale of greed, lust and the usual etceteras, a story in which sooner or later someone is bound to offer a business proposition with the caveat: "It's gotta look like an accident." However simply he approaches this familiar milieu, Stone winds up treating his story's sin-soaked connivers the way Francis Ford Coppola treated vampires. Neither of them is really capable of anything plain. So "U-Turn" becomes a showcase for the filmmaker's terrific arsenal of visual mannerisms and free-association imagery. This can indeed be dizzying, what with unexpected angles, sudden shifts in points of view, frequent high-voltage surprises and all the fangs, beaks and antlers that illustrate the film's basic premise. ("Human beings ain't just human, you know. They got animals livin' inside them too.") Indeed, Stone's gleeful experiment is often as liberating for the viewer as it must have been for him. But his film, a long, decadent wallow that cheerfully includes events like a fight with golf club, ax and Indian spear, does finally prove that it's possible to leap off the deep end even on very dry land. Energized by obvious spontaneity and featuring the inspired visual efforts of many longtime Stone collaborators, as well as the zesty addition of an Ennio Morricone score, "U-Turn" adapts the novel "Stray Dogs," by John Ridley (who wrote the screenplay), into a parade of colorful lowlifes. The filmmaker describes the genre as "scorpions in a bucket." In this universe it's better to be a stranger in town than one of the thrill-starved locals, that's for sure. So into dusty little Superior, Ariz., come Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn) and his Mustang and his sunglasses, none of them looking to stick around. Unfortunately, the car winds up at the garage owned by sneaky Darrell (Billy Bob Thornton, having a ball behind grizzled whiskers and bad teeth), and Bobby winds up as Superior's latest catch. Barely has he strode down Main Street (and Only Street) when Bobby is bewitched by Grace McKenna (Jennifer Lopez). She invites him home, where it develops that Grace has a husband and a problem. They are one and the same: Jake McKenna, played by Nick Nolte with a hard Lee Marvin look and a few grudges of his own. When not busy being played for a fool by one McKenna or the other, Bobby sees the rest of the sights, including Powers Boothe as the sheriff and a heavily disguised Jon Voight as a blind Indian sage. ("You know, we're all eyes in the same head," says the wise man. "Everything is everything. Everything is nothing too.") Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix play a giddy ingenue and her amusingly unhinged boyfriend. "Is everybody in this town on drugs?" Bobby is eventually prompted to ask. Maybe not, but somebody has spent an awful lot of time experiencing subliminal flashes and contemplating bleached skulls. The film captures that outlook with Robert Richardson's extremely versatile cinematography, some of it given a nicely dated and tawdry edge with the use of reversal film stock, the kind used in military training films. Editing by Hank Corwin and Thomas J. Nordberg avoids the hysterical pitch of "Natural Born Killers" while still keeping the audience off balance. Set decoration is playful too, including signs ("How Long Will You Live?") and kitschy objects that comment on the increasingly lurid action. It's best not to read too much into these or anything else. PRODUCTION NOTES U-TURN Rating: "U-Turn" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes sex and murder, both graphic. Directed by Oliver Stone; written by John Ridley, based on his book "Stray Dogs"; director of photography, Robert Richardson; edited by Hank Corwin and Thomas J. Nordberg; music by Ennio Morricone; production designer, Victor Kempster; produced by Dan Halsted and Clayton Townsend; released by Tri-Star Pictures. Running time: 125 minutes. Cast: Sean Penn (Bobby Cooper), Jennifer Lopez (Grace McKenna), Nick Nolte (Jake McKenna), Powers Boothe (Sheriff Potter), Claire Danes (Jenny), Joaquin Phoenix (Toby N. Tucker), Billy Bob Thornton (Darrell) and Jon Voight (Blind Man).

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Release details.

• Duration: 125 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Oliver Stone
• Screenwriter: John Ridley
• Powers Boothe
• Joaquin Phoenix
• Jennifer Lopez
• Billy Bob Thornton
• Claire Danes

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Miles from nowhere, speeding down the open road, Bobby Cooper's (Sean Penn) feeling good. And why shouldn't he be? On a path beaten by thousands of small time gamblers before him, Bobby's on his way to pay offal debt in Las Vegas. Russian gangsters had Bobby behind the eight ball. All that's behind him now that he's flushed with green. But just like life, when you think you've got it made, something happens. It's hard to believe where a busted radiator hose will get you.

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Movie Review: 'U-Turn'

As the first Oliver Stone movie — or at least the first one since he became a great filmmaker — to gleefully dispense with sociopolitical significance, U-Turn (TriStar) is an overdue event, a chance for Stone to apply his hypnotic acid-trip-of-the-soul wizardry to something sexy and lowdown. Set in the kind of sunbaked and dilapidated 50-miles-from-nowhere hick town that looks like the backdrop for an apocalyptic beer commercial, the movie is a spectacularly scuzzy comedy of fate, a film noir that winks at you. The hero, Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn), is a gambler who has seen better days (his hand, we learn, has recently been separated from two of its fingers). Driving to Las Vegas, Bobby looks tough enough, with his suavely disheveled jet-black coif, his James Dean postures, and — what else could this man possibly drive? — his vintage red Mustang convertible. At the same time, the film lets us know that he’s basically a disreputable dog.

When Bobby’s car blows its radiator hose, he wheels it into Superior, Ariz., a mining village so cruddy and depressing it’s like Tijuana as a ghost town. The temperature is about a zillion degrees (sweat could be the local industry), and the sun isn’t the only thing that’s overheating. The moment Bobby arrives, bad voodoo seems to emanate from everywhere. It starts with the local mechanic, played — hilariously — by Billy Bob Thornton as a hostile pigpen slob (dirt is practically etched into his skin). This walking grease pit seems to take great delight in inconveniencing Bobby, and, in fact, the slyly sinister joke of the movie is that everything that happens to poor Bobby is, in essence, a form of karma: cosmic payback for his being a hustler and a lout. He’s a man with no loyalty — he’ll say anything to get what he wants — and now the world is refusing to show loyalty to him .

Wandering the streets, Bobby is assailed by such Twilight Zone locals as a blind but all-seeing Native American derelict (Jon Voight) and a dimply, down-home nymphet (Claire Danes) who keeps showing up to bat her eyelashes at him, tailed by her violent hulk of a boyfriend (Joaquin Phoenix, in a magnetic bit of sociopathic shtick). Is there a femme fatale? Do you even have to ask? Bobby catches the eye of Grace (Jennifer Lopez), a sultry beauty so cool and sleek she stands out from Superior like a glass of Dom Perignon atop a dunghill. He also meets Jake (Nick Nolte), her raging psycho of a husband. It’s soon unclear who wants to pay who to do away with whom. Nolte, looking like Tom Waits’ horror-movie cousin, leers and rasps and generally has a wild time playing the scummiest scumbag of his career.

The chain-of-disaster form of U-Turn is, by now, a genre all its own — call it Rube Goldberg noir. I’m speaking of such black comedies of entropic coincidence as After Hours and Red Rock West . Stone, drawing on Westerns from Duel in the Sun to Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia , infuses the genre with his dazzling gift for ambiguous poetic menace. The surprises in U-Turn aren’t simply the plot twists, which hinge on such merry subjects as incest; they’re the haunting flashes of dread, memory, and desire within the twists. Stone, working in the dense channel-surfing style of JFK and Natural Born Killers , makes every shot a jolt, a sliver of ominous perception.

The first two thirds of U-Turn is a rude, seductive head bender. But around the time it turns from day to night, the film begins to lose its tricky aura of borderline surreal mystery. It becomes another rigged, what-will-happen-next suspense game, and you begin to sense just how arbitrary the twists are. Stone was right to want to apply his gifts to a hip, throwaway thriller. By the end, though, he can’t resist inflating it to something larger — a blood opera of sadomasochistic love. Less, in this case, would have been more. B+

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Directed by Oliver Stone

Sex. Murder. Betrayal. Everything that makes life worth living.

When Bobby's car breaks down in the desert while on the run from some of the bookies who have already taken two of his fingers, he becomes trapped in the nearby small town where the people are stranger than anyone he's encountered. After becoming involved with a young married woman, her husband hires Bobby to kill her. Later, she hires Bobby to kill the husband.

Sean Penn Nick Nolte Jennifer Lopez Joaquin Phoenix Claire Danes Powers Boothe Billy Bob Thornton Jon Voight Abraham Benrubi Richard Rutowski Aida Linares Sean Stone Ilia Volok Brent Briscoe Bo Hopkins Julie Hagerty Annie Tien Sheri Foster Laurie Metcalf Liv Tyler Jeff Flach Valeriy Nikolaev

Director Director

Oliver Stone

Producers Producers

Clayton Townsend Dan Halsted Richard Rutowski

Writer Writer

John Ridley

Original Writer Original Writer

Casting casting.

Mary Vernieu Anne McCarthy Alyssa Weisberg

Editors Editors

Hank Corwin Thomas J. Nordberg

Cinematography Cinematography

Robert Richardson

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Seth Cirker

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Lighting lighting.

Jonathan Lumley

Camera Operator Camera Operator

Jerry G. Callaway

Additional Photography Add. Photography

Production design production design.

Victor Kempster

Art Direction Art Direction

Dan Webster

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Merideth Boswell

Stunts Stunts

Tierre Turner Stephanie Finochio

Composer Composer

Ennio Morricone

Sound Sound

David Kneupper Scott Millan Brad Sherman Gary Alper Chris Hogan Brian McPherson Rick Morris Peter J. Lehman

Costume Design Costume Design

Beatrix Aruna Pasztor

Makeup Makeup

John Blake Mark Sanchez Ken Diaz

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Cydney Cornell Melissa Yonkey Dino Ganziano

Canal+ Droits Audiovisuels Illusion Entertainment Group Phoenix Pictures Clyde Is Hungry Films

Releases by Date

03 oct 1997, 14 jan 1998, 22 jan 1998, 06 feb 1998, 12 feb 1998, 06 mar 1998, 23 apr 1998, 24 apr 1998, 10 sep 1998, 05 aug 1999, 04 dec 1999, 20 feb 2008, 30 oct 2009, 06 sep 2003, releases by country.

• Theatrical 16
• Theatrical 15+
• Theatrical 18

Netherlands

• TV 16 Net 5
• Physical 16 DVD
• Theatrical M/16

South Korea

• Theatrical 15
• Theatrical R

125 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Sofa Sinema ★★★★★ 6

-------------------------------- Razzie Awards 1998

Nominee Worst Director Oliver Stone

Worst Supporting Actor Jon Voight -------------------------------- Oliver Stone's Apache leap.

What a time the nineties was for this brand of cinema. Red Rock West , The Hot Spot , Kalifornia , U-Turn , Freeway , Truth or Consequences, N.M. , Phoenix and so many lesser known DTV titles that fellow Letterboxers likely have compiled into lists that I need to peruse. I kind of want to bury my head in the hot sand of that brilliant postmodern glut of sweaty bad boys, even sweatier femme fatales, and overheated chrome that's hot to the touch.

A typically frank and evocative audio commentary by Stone. This darkly pessimistic and colorful comic book noir gets better with every watch, but…

Review by matt lynch ★★★★

"Human beings ain't only just human, you know. They got animals living inside 'em too."

It wouldn't be hard to dismiss this as empty cynicism, or even worse an attempt by Stone to get in on the 90's crime movie wave, and indeed it is a pretty ostentatious, glibly nasty thing (and often representationally ugly on top). Maybe he was just reeling from NIXON's commercial failure. If this is work for hire though it's rife with the signs of a director keeping himself interested, specifically in the aspect of karma that haunts this like it haunts a lot of his films, and that kind of whispers its way in here in minuscule moments of peace. All of the characters are…

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★ 13

Along with Kalifornia, this is another film whose movie poster has intrigued me for a long time and made me very curious. Unlike Brad Pitt's film, this one is a film that should have stayed a fond memory, since now that I have seen it, it's a complete disappointment.

Starting up, Stone attempted to replicate the style of "Natural Born Killers," but as Ebert noted at the time, the film lacks the little nuance and commentary that one did, instead feeling like a dull attempt at archiving mainstream success without ever becoming a successful film due to its repetitiveness and poorly executed frantic editing that often come rather pretentious.

At times, JLO's acting can feel a bit awkward, but that…

Review by Piratenlehrer ★★★★

🏜️ Hilfe, was für ein Kaff!

„Woanders liegt gute fünfzig Meilen von hier!“

Bobby Cooper ist ein kleiner Ganove auf der Flucht nach Las Vegas. Üble Typen, die vor nichts zurückschrecken, sind ihm auf den Fersen. Zwei Finger haben sie ihm schon abgeschnitten, weil er seine Schulden nicht bezahlen konnte. Mit Koks und Pillen hält er sich auf den Beinen, doch der Weg durch Arizonas Wüste ist gnadenlos. In Superior, einem kleinen Nest im Nirgendwo, strandet Bobby wegen Kühlerschadens. Er bekommt zwar das schärfste Mädchen vor Ort - aber auch deren Ehemann - und zu allem Überfluss verliert er auch noch seine Lebensversicherung, die geraubten Moneten. Die Killer im Rücken, keine Kohle, kein Auto, kein Ausweg! Bis man ihm Geld…

Review by SpaghettiNoir ★★★★ 4

40,000 people die every day. How come you're not one of them?

Same movie as Red Rock West , but Oliver Stone's comic nightmare version is fueled by acid, cocaine, and god knows what else. And it's all set to a '70s-style Ennio Morricone score, which makes sense because by the end this is just Umberto Lenzi tripping in the desert.

Review by DirkH ★★★★ 7

This rewatch was long overdue. I still love it.

I'm not a big Stone fan, but this is turning into one of my favourites. This is in essence a funked up, twisty and turny Noir that works because of some incredible editing and some formidable performances.

Come to think of it, in the cast lies the real strength. Just look at that list: Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Voight, Claire Danes, Joaquin Phoenix, Powers Boothe and Billy Bob Thornton. They serve as a nice smoke screen for Mrs. Lopez whose only job is to look sultry at which she succeeds reasonably well.

Penn carries the film and actually manages to turn his two bit crook into a likeable character, which…

Review by chavel ★★★

Oliver Stone’s trippy visual lark occupied with boneheads and lowlifes. U-Turn is amusing as a no-way-out flytrap, featuring Sean Penn as a scuzzball named Bobby Cooper stuck in neutral while on his way to Las Vegas to pay-off debt to gangsters. Misfortunes begin when the radiator of his vintage red Mustang convertible blows in the hick town of Superior, Arizona. While waiting on the town mechanic (Billy Bob Thornton, the filthiest of rednecks), he gets entwined with a mocha-lips femme fatale (Jennifer Lopez) in a shoulder-strap orange dress. Jealous husband (Nick Nolte), a raging buck-toothed paranoid, naturally wants Bobby the drifter to kill his wife. There will be money.

This is a nightmare comedy melded in dirt, grease, sweat, bloodstains…

Review by Brian Saur ★★★½ 3

One of the darkest, bleakest noirs out there.

Review by jourdain searles

starring: cocaine

Review by Grooveman ★★★★★ 4

"Is everybody fucking everybody in this crazy God damn town?"

A very under seen and underrated 90's gem.

Review by Jack ★★★★

U shall not pass!

Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 ★★★ 3

The 80s and 90s Neo-Noir Project

It's pretty easy to see why Oliver Stone dresses U Turn up the way he does.

All the little quirky stylistic flashes and the strangely out-of-context music score and the schizophrenic photography. They're all designed to distract us away from about as normal a crime drama as you're likely to see. I don't even think he's being particularly coy about it either.

He seemingly knows that his story is nothing special and although he populates the fringes of his film with fun characters (Billy Bob Thornton and an hilarious Joaquin Phoenix especially), U Turn is mere window dressing. I wonder why a director of his ability, however, chose to do it this way.

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Only Oliver Stone knows what he was trying to accomplish by making "U-Turn,'' and it is a secret he doesn't share with the audience. This is a repetitive, pointless exercise in genre filmmaking--the kind of movie where you distract yourself by making a list of the sources.

Much of the story comes from " Red Rock West ," John Dahl's 1994 film about a man and a wife who both try to persuade a drifter to kill the other. And the images and milieu are out of Russ Meyer country; his "Cherry, Harry and Raquel'' and "SuperVixens'' contain the same redneck sheriffs, the same lustful wives, the same isolated shacks and ignorant mechanics and car culture. "U-Turn'' and "Cherry'' both end, indeed, with a debt to "Duel in the Sun.'' I imagine Stone made this movie as sort of a lark, after the exhausting but remarkable accomplishments of "Nixon," "Natural Born Killers," "Heaven and Earth" and "JFK." Well, he deserves a break--but this one? Stone is a gifted filmmaker not afraid to take chances, to express ideas in his films and make political statements. Here he's on holiday. Watching "U-Turn,'' I was reminded of a concert pianist playing "Chopsticks'': It is done well, but one is disappointed to find it done at all.

The film stars Sean Penn in a convincing performance all the more admirable for being pointless. He plays Bobby, a man who has had bad luck up the road (his bandaged hand is missing two fingers), and will have a lot more bad luck in the desert town of Superior, Ariz. He wheels into town in his beloved Mustang convertible, which needs a new radiator hose, and encounters the loathsome Darrell ( Billy Bob Thornton ), a garage mechanic he will eventually be inspired to call an "ignorant inbred turtleneck hick.'' While Darrell works on the car, Bobby walks into town. Superior is one of those backwater hells much beloved in the movies, where everyone is malevolent, oversexed, narrow-eyed and hateful. There are never any industries in these towns (except for garages, saloons and law enforcement) because everyone is too preoccupied by sex, lying, scheming, embezzling and hiring strangers to kill each other.

Bobby quickly finds a sultry young woman named Grace ( Jennifer Lopez ), and is invited home to help her install her drapes and whatever else comes to mind. Soon her enraged husband, Jake ( Nick Nolte ), comes charging in, red-eyed and bewhiskered, to threaten Bobby with his life, but after the obligatory fight, they meet down the road and Jake asks Bobby to kill his wife. Soon Grace will want Bobby to kill her husband (the "Red Rock West'' bit), and the film leads to one of those situations where Bobby's life depends on which one he believes.

Superior, Ariz., is the original town without pity. During the course of his brief stay there, Bobby will be kicked in the ribs several dozen times, almost be bitten by a tarantula, shot at, and have his car all but destroyed--and that's all before the final scenes with the vultures circling overhead. Bobby comes across almost like a character in a computer game; you wipe him out, he falls down, stars spin around his head, and then he jumps up again, ready for action.

The film is well made on the level of craft; of course it is, with this strong cast, and Stone directing, and Robert Richardson as cinematographer. But it goes around and around until, like a merry-go-round rider, we figure out that the view is always changing but it's never going to be new. There comes a sinking feeling, half an hour into the film, when we realize that the characters are not driven by their personalities and needs, but by the plot. At that point they become puppets, not people. That's the last thing we'd expect in a film by Oliver Stone.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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U-Turn (1997)

Rated R For Strong Violence, Sexuality and Language

125 minutes

Sean Penn as Bobby Cooper

Powers Boothe as Sheriff

Julie Hagerty as Flo

Billy Bob Thornton as Darrell

Jon Voight as Blind Man

Nick Nolte as Jake McKenna

Joaquin Phoenix as Toby N. Tucker

Jennifer Lopez as Grace McKenna

Directed by

• Oliver Stone
• John Ridley

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Film review: u-turn (1997).

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REVIEW: Desert Noir may not be acknowledged as the most prominent cinema genre, but it remains one of the more interesting pop culture intersections where the western, the thriller, pulp fiction and road movie all spectacularly collide. Residing beneath the dusty surface of these coarse variations on human primitivism and alienation is a very old-fashioned morality fable like Detour (1945) or Red Rock West (1993), where the iconography of urban expressionism (blinking neon, wailing sirens, etc.) has been replaced with the call of the coyote, sun-bleached landscapes and roadkill.

Tags Billy Bob Thornton Claire Danes Jennifer Lopez Joaquin Phoenix John Ridley Jon Voight Nick Nolte Oliver Stone Sean Penn U-Turn

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U-Turn Review

24 Apr 1998

125 minutes

Having lost all sense of proportion with the over-inflated Nixon, Oliver Stone cuts back his budget and his post-NBK multimedia visuals to deliver a low-key, low-down, blacker-than-black comedy thriller. It's not the best film he's ever made, but certainly the best for a long while.

With more than a passing nod to John Dahl's Red Rock West, Stone's movie finds drifter Penn stuck in the arse-end of nowhere, his broken car in the garage, and two of his fingers seemingly missing.

What starts as a really bad day soon turns considerably worse under the frying temperatures of the noonday sun - deranged car mechanic Thornton won't give Penn his motor back, the local sheriff has his eye out for him, local vixen Lopez is on the tease, and her more-than-slightly possessive husband Nolte is none too chuffed with this new boy in town.

But soon, hubby is recruiting Penn to off the missus while she in turn is asking her newly bedded mate to do the same to hubby - who may well also be daddy (you know how these small towns are). Stone's direction seems generally reinvigorated by the reduced budget, with old Ollie out to prove his indie chops in inventive and often dazzling fashion. Having assembled an impressive cast, he's content to stand back and give them room to play, from the twisted humour of Thornton to the dark soul of Nolte to the luscious longings of Lopez. Penn, meanwhile, is superb - gradually falling apart through the course of the day, a man desperate to get out alive, with one eye on the road ahead and one on the buzzards circling above.

The plot does have obvious antecedents and Stone does betray himself with a few too many celeb cameos (just what is Liv Tyler doing standing in the back of that ticket office?). But for the most part, what you have here is a topnotch filmmaker getting back to basics and really delivering the goods.

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U-Turn Movie Review

Director: Pawan Kumar

Cast: Samantha Akkineni, Rahul Ravindran, Bhoomika Chawla

Pawan Kumar's U Turn is a remake of his Kannada PSA-disguised-as-a-horror movie, and it contains many… U-turns. Let's begin with the ostensible leading man, crime reporter Aditya (Rahul Ravindran). He has a thing for Rachana (Samantha), the intern at his office. But she's the one who asks if he wants to have a cup of coffee. This is Rachana's movie. Aditya is the arm candy, the "love interest," reduced to wondering why she is not picking up his calls. When Rachana becomes the damsel in distress — long story, which we'll get into in a bit — you think Aditya's crime-reporting skills will save her. But then, he ends up in trouble, a dude in distress. She sets out to save him. This gender twist is a smart little U-turn.

Now for the long story, which begins in an auto. This scene between Rachana and her mother exists to establish that the mother is leaving on a trip, and Rachana will be alone for the rest of the film – and Pawan Kumar could have achieved this by simply having the mother wave goodbye as Rachana closed the door. But this autoride slyly introduces the road as a major character, and it gives the characters the opportunity to talk, and through this talk, we learn about Rachana, her family (there's a brother with visa problems), her mother's exasperation with her unmarried status (which lets us know she's single and available), her impulsive boldness (which makes her propose to the auto driver, and explains at least a few future actions), her determined and independent nature (which will explain, later, why she invites danger home)… And eventually, we will see that this mother-daughter scene  forms a loose parallel with scenes of another mother and daughter on the road. Pawan Kumar packs so much into this short stretch, it feels like the screenwriter's equivalent of the four-minute mile.

U Turn is a fair-enough outing (it may play better for those who haven't seen the original). But the intensity in the build-up isn't matched by the corny conclusion

But something feels off. The performances are fine, but the pacing always seems a beat or two behind. This gives the talky portions of the film an amateur-theatre vibe — though, thankfully, things get better once people start dying and Rachana is hauled to the police station. The cops (Adhi plays sub-inspector Nayak) want to know why she was hanging around the house of a murdered man — Rachana wants to know, too. What has all this got to do with the illegal U-turn motorists take on a busy road in Chennai? And what's with the U itself, the shape? The U in an "I Love U" text message. The U that the camera does at the beginning, first showing us an inverted  shot of a road (the sky is at the bottom half of the screen) and then righting itself.

U Turn is a fair-enough outing (it may play better for those who haven't seen the original). But the intensity in the build-up isn't matched by the corny conclusion, which — as I wrote in my review of the Kannada movie– feels like something Mahesh Bhatt would have written for an Emraan Hashmi horror franchise. For now, though, let's celebrate this time in Tamil cinema. After two Nayanthara-led hits in Kolamavu Kokila (crime / thriller / black comedy) and Imaikka Nodigal (serial-killer thriller) — we have another heroine-led film in a genre that's usually male-dominated, and where the protagonist could just as easily have been written as male. Three such films is not a pattern, merely coincidence. But here's hoping that this coincidence turns into a trend.

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• Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman As the first Oliver Stone movie to gleefully dispense with sociopolitical significance, U-Turn is an overdue event, a chance for Stone to apply his hypnotic acid-trip-of-the-soul wizardry to something sexy and lowdown.
• Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert This is a repetitive, pointless exercise in genre filmmaking -- the kind of movie where you distract yourself by making a list of the sources.
• Creative Loafing Matt Brunson With the exception of 1988's lacerating Talk Radio, U Turn might be the most forgotten film in Oliver Stone's canon -- a shame, since it offers sinful pleasures for those willing to take the ride.
• San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle It demonstrates a filmmaker in complete command of his craft and with little control over his impulses.
• Rob's Movie Vault Rob Gonsalves This long, strange trip is fun but aimless.
• USA Today Mike Clark A sometimes uproarious minor work.
• Filmcritic.com Blake French It's a feast for the senses, as long as you have a strong stomach.
• Austin Chronicle Russell Smith This is also the most radical departure Stone has ever made in terms of basic sensibilities.
• Associated Press Ted Anthony The best art of any age typically comes from the dysfunctional artist, and U-Turn is just that -- Stone's oddball glimpse into a shadow America that no one wants to believe exists but that undoubtedly does.
• Variety Todd McCarthy The stylistic fun Stone has in dramatizing this crime of passion thoroughly revitalizes the well-worked genre.
• Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan 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.
• Houston Chronicle Jeff Millar 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.
• New York Times Janet Maslin U-Turn becomes a showcase for the filmmaker's terrific arsenal of visual mannerisms and free-association imagery.
• Salon.com Michelle Goldberg Stone the propagandist was insufferable, but as a cynic he's even worse.
• Washington Post Desson Thomson Although many of the performances -- particularly from Nolte, Penn and Thornton -- are enjoyable, the movie plunges so deeply into black comedic hell, all is lost.
• Reeling Reviews Robin Clifford One of Stone's best narrative, and thought-provoking, efforts to date.
• ReelTalk Movie Reviews Donald J. Levit 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.'
• Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews Dennis Schwartz A bad trip flick.
• rec.arts.movies.reviews Dragan Antulov Much longer and tiresome to the audience than it should have been.

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U-Turn movie review: Alaya F steals the show in this thriller almost ruined by jumpscares and weak script

U-turn movie review: alaya f is immensely watchable as a journalist uncovering the truth about a deadly road in this yet another remake of a kannada film..

What happens when you start blaming your conscience for everything wrong around you? You fear for your life, imagine yourself talking to the dead and see ghosts killing people. Sounds like a perfect script for a thriller, isn't it? But imagine when a weak screenplay mars this experience, and give you an average thriller in return with wafer-thin plot, predictable turns and unwanted twists. Alaya F's U-Turn is a blend of all this and more. Directed by Arif Khan, this happens to be the seventh remake of the 2016 Kannada film by the same name. This makes me ponder what different Khan could have done here to ensure his version still works. Surprisingly, though, the film works in parts and the broad storyline never seems that convincing, it still somehow manages to keep you hooked till the last scene for the sheer curiosity of finding who was the killer. Basically, why we would watch even the most average thriller till the end. (Also read: Citadel review: Priyanka Chopra is the best thing about Prime Video's expensive but average new series )

U-Turn chronicles the story of Radhika Bakshi (Alaya), an intern with a newspaper who is working on a story on the newly constructed NTPC flyover in Chandigarh where motorists remove the divider blocks to take a U-turn and don't put the blocks back, which leads to fatal accidents. Digging deep into the story, Radhika ends up interviewing some of these drivers who took a U-turn and on one night, when one of these motorists is found dead in his house, she ends up being the prime suspect. When police office Arjun Sinha (Priyanshu Painyuli) investigates the case, it is found that all other motorists that took a U-turn on that flyover in the last one year out of which some Radhika even met and interviewed, are dead. While the cops continue to suspect Radhika for all these murders, she just wants to prove herself innocent. Amid all this, there are supernatural activities which hint at a different story altogether.

The film engages you and keeps you on the edge of your seat and gives you chills in quite a few scenes, but weak writing, a poor script and meandering subplots make it look flawed. Though the story is more or less predictable, it's the climax and yet another twist post climax that make you sit back and take notice. But, don't complain even if it seems to be too little, too late.

Arif's direction isn't really bad, but the wafer-thin plot infused with supernatural elements never lets him do anything out of the box. At one hour 44 minutes, the film may not look stretched but it loses pace in between. Soon, Pawan Kumar's story starts to appear half-baked and works only in parts. It begins on a high note, creates curiosity, engages you initially, but falls flat in the second half. There are way too many needless, rather digressing subplots that could have been easily done away with. Radhika's mother, we are shown in one scene, is talking to her dead son, but that track is barely explored or we're told too little about it. It gives you chills but it lasts only for those few seconds. After a while, this whole supernatural track looks just unbelievably creepy. The so-not-scary jump scares are irritating and in the name of horror, we are once again fed the done to death tropes - heavy blowing winds, power cut, blinking lights, sudden hailstorm, metal clanking sounds, sudden knock at the door and so on.

Written by Parvez Sheikh and Radhika Anand, U-turn doesn't even boast of having any great dialogues or memorable one-liners. In fact, I can barely remember any line that stayed with me after the film. The one thing perhaps was when Manu Rishi Chadha's character repeatedly says, "Yeh sab hawaon ka chakkar hai, aapki aur meri samajh se pare'. Even the credit for that goes to Manu Rishi's humorous tone rather than clever writing. Anubhav Bansal's cinematography, to some extent, sets the tone right for the thriller and captures the city beautifully from all angles.

Amid all this, Alaya delivers a solid performance and turns out to be one of the most promising newcomers in recent times. She exudes confidence and looks effortless in both vulnerable as well as strong scenes. There's a natural flair in her acting and something very calming about her screen presence that it all looks very real and relatable. She brings a balance in her body language, expression and how she emotes on screen without going overboard. However, despite being the protagonist, I felt there are several places where the story and useless supernatural elements overshadow Alaya's performance. Other than Alaya, another performance that truly stands out is of Manu Rishi Chadda. The ease with which he performs on screen is a proof of brilliant acting and experience. Priyanshu is earnest in his act though there's only so much his character is given to perform. He has enough screen time but it never gets to the point where his character stands out or make an impact. As a cop, investigating serial murders, I sensed a lack of urgency and proactiveness in his body language and at places or maybe the character sketch never allows him to grow beyond a point. Among the other supporting cast, Aditya (Ashim Gulati), Alaya's friend at the newspaper office, HSP Saxena (Rajesh Sharma) are completely wasted and used as mere props - former for a blink-and-miss twist and latter for a comic relief.

U-Turn doesn't disappoint overall but definitely could have been a near-perfect watch with a better screenplay and a little more gripping story that didn't keep meandering from one end to another and losing pace in between. Watch it if you like thrillers, and don't let the jump scares startle you.

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U-Turn - Reviews and Discussion

Discuss this movie here

In the movie U Turn, a teenage reporter sets out to compile a list of those charged with moving the dividing stone so that vehicles could take a U-turn on the highway. She continues collecting the list of names from the roadside beggar. She visited their house to conduct the interview. But the mystery is that everyone she met after that was constantly dead. The remaining portion of the movie explores the mystery behind the death.

Release Date

Zee5 will air the Hindi version of U Turn on April 28, 2023

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U-Turn Review : This remake of a Kannada film is filled with enough thrills and chills to keep viewers invested

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Our overall critic’s rating is not an average of the sub scores below.

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The worst remake and very bad acting by all star cast

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'U Turn' Review: Turn Worth Taking

Movie: U Turn Rating: 3/5 Banner: Srinivasaa Silver Screen Cast: Samantha Akkineni, Adhi Pinishetty, Bhumika, Rahul Ravindran, Ravi Prakash and others Dialogues: Bheem Music: Poornachandra Tejaswi Cinematography: Niketh Editor: Suresh Arumugam Action: Chetan D’Souza Producers: Srinivasaa Chhitturi, Rambabu Bandaru Written and directed by: Pawan Kumar Release date: September 13, 2018

Samantha, one of the top leading ladies in Tollywood, has attempted to produce and act in a female-oriented thriller for the first time with 'U Turn' which won critical claim for its Kannada version.

The Telugu trailer drew attention too as it was intriguing. Amidst good buzz, the thriller hit the screens. Let’s find out more about this movie...

Story: A young reporter Rachana (Samantha) becomes the prime suspect in a case related to a series of deaths. She informs the young police officer that she’s working on the news story and she has nothing to do with the deaths happening at RK Puram flyover.

Initially, police don’t believe her story but later the young police officer (Aadhi Pinishetty) buys her version after watching a death that happens in front of his eyes.

How Rachana with the help of this police officer clears the puzzle behind the deaths forms the main story.

Artistes’ Performances: Samantha has pulled off the role of a young reporter with ease. Unlike her role in recent ‘Mahanati’, this journalist role is more real and contemporary. She has given her best shot though her dialogue delivery is not convincing.

Aadhi Pinishetty plays typical police officer role in his usual style. Bhumika actually appears in a guest role for ten minutes. Rahul Ravindran is just okay.

Technical Excellence: The film has fantastic technical qualities with first rate cinematography, good sound mixing and perfect production design. All the technicians have worked in tandem to create mood in the first half.

Highlights: First half Mood Technical aspects

Drawback: Predictable climax

Analysis: “U Turn” is remake of a Kannada movie of the same name and the original director Pawan Kumar has made it in Telugu as well. This is essentially a mystery thriller with super-natural elements.

As long as the film focuses on mystery part (the deaths and Samantha’s link to it) it is engaging, but it turns too predictable once the supernatural element is introduced.

Director Pawan Kumar has chosen a story that has an undercurrent social message -- people lacking basic traffic sense. This message is coated with mystery elements by focusing on minute details, building suspense, creating the mood.

The director has taken so much care to tell it in a realistic way though he forgets some basic points like how the police officers have no right to keep a woman for a night in the police station.

A senior-ranking officer’s constant growl against the young officer for probing further doesn’t make sense at all.

Despite these problems and slow pace, the movie is engaging enough till the interval without a doubt.

The film’s entire strength lies in the initial portions which give us the feel that we are watching a superb riveting thriller.

There are some stunning moments too and the director keeps the audience guessing with twists. However, the novelty and the interesting factor wears off as the movie progresses.

There isn't enough meat in the penultimate sequences to keep us engaged. When the twist is revealed, we get the feeling that it is a forcible trick. These sequences should have been dealt in a better way.

Logic also goes missing in the climax part.

All in all, ‘U Turn’ is a suspense thriller that offers some thrilling moments and banks heavily on performances and initial portions.

Bottom-line:  Engaging Thriller

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