cult film freak: GENE HACKMAN SHOTGUNS 'GET SHORTY' STARRING JOHN TRAVOLTA

Gene Hackman co-starring in GET SHORTY Year: 1995 Rating: ****1/2

One of the late Gene Hackman's least Gene Hackman-style roles is Barry Sonnenfeld's hip/slick adaption of novelist Elmore Leonard's Hollywood satire GET SHORTY, where, on the other hand, John Travolta's central shylark Chili Palmer is very much in Travolta's wheelhouse... since he'd just played another likeable yet dangerous wiseguy in Quentin Tarantino's PULP FICTION...

Yet his character here's far more smooth, confident and upfront, using his own resilient quick wits (and sometimes fists) instead of a gun, or armed partner... although this particular lone wolf's surrounded by many characters straight from Leonard's usual arsenal of fast-talkers, including Hackman's passive-aggressive b-movie-directing boob Harry Zimm, who gets beaten to a pulp by the film's first of two sharply-dressed antagonists...

John Travolta starring in GET SHORTY

Spanning both coasts, Florida and Los Angeles: the first in Dennis Farina, a mustached mob torpedo who basically forces Travolta's Palmer to Hollywood (to collect a debt from Hackman, who connects everyone)... and Delroy Lindo as a would-be Hollywood player, playing less comedic with a dire prowess backed by down-to-earth stuntman/bodyguard James Gandolfini while up front there's love-interest Rene Russo, providing Travolta an inevitable romance that's not too forced, connected to the titular SHORTY in Danny DeVito as A-list actor Martin Weir...

Who's all ears to Chili's meta treatment of the fast-moving movie already in progress: making GET SHORTY a combination of cult-quirky and enjoyably-mainstream that, although made before JACKIE BROWN, wouldn't have existed without Tarantino's style — that was originally inspired by Elmore's Leonard's page-turners.