China Moon | |
---|---|
![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | John Bailey |
Written by | Roy Carlson |
Produced by | Barrie M. Osborne |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Willy Kurant |
Edited by | Carol Littleton Jill Savitt |
Music by | George Fenton |
Distributed by | Orion Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 99 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $15 million |
Box office | $3,038,499 (USA, sub-total) [1] |
China Moon is a 1994 American neo-noir romantic thriller film directed by John Bailey and starring Ed Harris, Madeleine Stowe and Benicio del Toro. It was written by Roy Carlson. It was filmed in 1991 but "shelved" for three years before its release. [2]
![]() | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed.(October 2016) |
Detectives Kyle Bodine and Lamar Dickey are investigating a murder scene. Bodine tutors Dickey in the ways of homicide investigations, stressing that all murderers make stupid mistakes, which is how they get caught.
At a local bar, Bodine hits on Rachel Munro, who blows him off. Rachel is married to wealthy banker Rupert Munro. Back at home, she gets drunk as she looks at a private investigator's photos of Rupert making love to one of his employees, Adele. Rupert is intimidating and emotionally abusive towards Rachel, who decides to give in to Kyle's advances and start an affair with him.
At one point, the lovers row out on a lake at night. Kyle points out the large full moon and says that his grandmother called it a China Moon, because it looks like a giant china dish. His grandmother thought a China Moon made people do crazy things. Their affair quickly picks up steam, and Kyle urges Rachel to divorce Rupert.
Soon after, Kyle and Lamar are called to the Munro's on a domestic disturbance complaint. They find Rachel badly beaten. Kyle warns Rupert to leave her alone. Later that night, Rachel drives to Kyle's trailer and fantasizes about killing Rupert. She explains that she has bought a 9mm gun. She says that she could take a trip to Miami, drive back one night and kill him. Then she could return to her trip unseen, using it as an alibi. Kyle tries to talk her down, but she flees in a panic.
Rachel arrives at a hotel in Miami, and the concierge hands her an envelope which contains the picture of a rental car and its keys. Later, she leaves the hotel at night, without noticing Adele sitting in the lobby. She gets in the rental car and drives back to her home. Meanwhile, Adele enters her hotel room.
Instead of driving home, Rachel drives to Kyle's trailer, and he agrees to drive her home to get her things. He waits in the car as she packs a suitcase. Kyle does not see Rupert returning home, and when Rupert encounters Rachel in the act of leaving him, he flies into a rage. She gets her 9mm gun and shoots him twice in self-defense. She stops Kyle from calling the police because she points out that she drove back from Miami without checking out of her hotel, just like her murder fantasy. She knows she would look guilty, and Kyle agrees to help her cover her tracks. Using his skills, he helps her carefully clear the crime scene, even removing the bullets from the wall, spackling over the holes and painting them. They dump Rupert's body in the same lake where they first made love. Back at the house, Kyle turns on the humidifiers to erase any of his fingerprints.
Rachel returns to the hotel in Miami and has brunch by the pool the next morning. When she returns home, she sticks to Kyle's plan and calls Rupert's bank. Rupert's secretary informs Rachel that he has not been in to work, and Rachel reports him missing to the police. Kyle and Lamar are assigned to the case. During their interviews with Rachel, Lamar is highly skeptical of her story, pointing out all its inconsistencies. Lamar casually hypothesizes that Rachel killed Rupert with the help of one of her many boyfriends. He tells Kyle that Rachel is well known for wrapping men around her finger, and that, with the millions she would inherit from Rupert, it was highly likely that she got one of her boyfriends to help her kill Rupert and dispose of his body. Lamar starts to unnerve Kyle, who begins to doubt Rachel is telling him the truth.
Lamar gets a tip about a car being out at the lake on the night of the murder. The police divers find Rupert's body. During the autopsy, the coroner extracts a bullet from Rupert's chest. Lamar takes the bullet and hands it to Kyle, saying that it looks like a .38. The detectives confirm that it is a .38, which is the caliber of gun that Kyle carries. During his first date with Rachel, she had inquired about the caliber of his gun.
Back at the Munro house, Kyle discovers the photos of Rupert and Adele in Rachel's wardrobe. The crime scene technician discovers a bullet hole in the wall, and the extracted bullet is also a .38. Kyle is summoned to a meeting with his supervisor, who suspends him pending an investigation into his involvement with the case. He orders Kyle to surrender his pistol.
Later that day, Lamar arrives at Kyle's trailer and asks him to come in for some more questioning. The pistol he surrendered did not match the serial number on his service weapon. Sitting in the back seat of Lamar's car, Kyle fixates on a compass that sits on Lamar's dashboard. After a second, more forceful interrogation with his supervisor and Lamar, Kyle returns home and re-examines the pictures he discovered at Rachel's. He identifies Lamar's dashboard compass in the bottom of the frame of one of the pictures.
Adele meets with Lamar, and he pays her for her part in the scheme, after she shows him a ticket to prove that she is leaving town. He promises to pay her the rest of her share once he has received his cut. Kyle sneaks into Rachel's house and confronts her about the scheme. She confesses that Rupert was going to leave her with nothing, and that Lamar had concocted the scheme to make sure she inherited all of Rupert's fortune. She swears that, despite the fact that Lamar had designated Kyle as the fall guy, she had fallen in love with him.
Kyle orders her to set up a meeting with Lamar at the bar where they met. At the bar, Kyle confronts Lamar. He confirms that Lamar had switched out the 9mm bullet for a .38 during the coroner inquest. He asks Lamar where his service revolver is, and Lamar says it is in his car. Kyle forces Lamar out to his car at gunpoint to retrieve the .38. The bartender sees Kyle's gun at Lamar's back and calls the police. They arrive as Kyle is searching for his pistol underneath the driver's seat in Lamar's car. Lamar calls out to the police that Kyle has a gun, and they open fire, killing Kyle. A distraught Rachel runs over to Kyle as he lies dying. She picks up the .38 and kills Lamar.
The film was shot in DeLuxe color on location in Florida, using Panavision equipment, [3] in the locations of Bartow, Lakeland and Tampa. [4]
China Moon has a 40% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. [5]
On July 12, 1994, Orion Home Video released the film on VHS. Then MGM Home Entertainment released it through their Movie Time label on July 28, 1998. The film also came out on DVD December 25, 2001.
The following songs are used in the film:
Some of the live music scenes include Sam Myers on harmonica and vocals, and Anson Funderburgh on electric guitar.
Cul-de-sac is a 1966 British black comedy psychological thriller film directed by Roman Polanski, written by Polanski and Gérard Brach, and starring Donald Pleasence, Françoise Dorléac, Lionel Stander, Jack MacGowran, Iain Quarrier, Geoffrey Sumner, Renée Houston, William Franklyn, Trevor Delaney, and Marie Kean. It also features Jacqueline Bisset in a small role, in her second film appearance. Polanski's second English-language feature, it follows two injured American gangsters who take refuge in the remote island castle of a young British couple in the north of England, spurring a series of mind games and violent altercations.
Insomnia is a 2002 American psychological thriller film directed by Christopher Nolan and written by Hillary Seitz. It is the only film directed by Nolan that he did not write or cowrite. A remake of the 1997 Norwegian film, it stars Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hilary Swank, with Maura Tierney, Martin Donovan, Nicky Katt, and Paul Dooley in supporting roles.
Victor "Vic" Windsor is a fictional character from the British ITV soap opera Emmerdale, played by Alun Lewis for a period of five years, from 1993 until 1998. Vic was the second husband of shopkeeper, Viv Windsor, and also father of Kelly Windsor and Donna Windsor. He was killed off in an armed robbery by Billy Hopwood on Christmas Day 1998.
The Golden Ball and Other Stories is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1971 in an edition priced at $5.95. It contains fifteen short stories, all of which were originally published from 1925 through 1934. The stories were taken from The Listerdale Mystery, The Hound of Death and Problem at Pollensa Bay and Other Stories.
Wild Rebels is a 1967 film directed by William Grefe and starring Steve Alaimo as Rod Tillman, a stock car driver who goes undercover as the wheelman for a motorcycle gang. The tagline for the film was "They live for kicks... love for kicks... kill for kicks".
The Atlanta Police Department (APD) is a law enforcement agency in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Dhund is a 1973 Hindi thriller movie produced and directed by B. R. Chopra. It stars Sanjay Khan, Zeenat Aman, Danny Denzongpa, Deven Verma, Madan Puri, Navin Nischol and Ashok Kumar. The music is by Ravi. The plot is inspired by Agatha Christie's 1958 play, The Unexpected Guest.
2000 AD is a 2000 Hong Kong action thriller film directed by Gordon Chan, who also wrote the screenplay with Stu Zicherman. The film stars Aaron Kwok, Phyllis Quek, James Lye and Daniel Wu. The film was shot on location in both Hong Kong and Singapore. The film was released theatrically in Hong Kong on 3 February 2000. It was timed to screen during the peak Chinese New Year period.
In Odd We Trust is the first graphic novel featuring Dean Koontz's character Odd Thomas. It was released June 24, 2008. It is written by Queenie Chan and Koontz, with illustrations by Chan in a manga style.
"Try" is the thirty-fourth episode of the American television drama series The Killing, which aired on July 14, 2013. The episode is written by Nic Sheff and Aaron Slavick; directed by Lodge Kerrigan. In the episode, Pastor Mike kidnaps Sarah Linden. Stephen Holder and the police must listen to the Linden/Pastor conversation via her two-way radio, which she has activated unbeknownst to Pastor Mike. Ray Seward panics as his execution is two days away. Bullet roams the streets looking for Lyric and learns about Angie Gower.
"Freezes Over" is a four-issue Hellblazer story arc written by Brian Azzarello and drawn by artist Marcelo Frusin published by DC Comics under its Vertigo imprint. The story tells of John Constantine, an infamous English occult detective and con man, during one of his travels in the backbone of the United States. There he gets entangled in a saloon situation while seeking shelter from a strong blizzard. Eventually this leads to murder and a revelation of a local urban myth.
Evidence is a 2013 crime thriller film directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi and written by John Swetnam. The film stars Torrey DeVitto, Caitlin Stasey, Harry Lennix, Svetlana Metkina, Dale Dickey, Radha Mitchell, and Stephen Moyer and was released by Bold Films on July 19, 2013. It follows two detectives on their investigation of a brutal massacre, with their only leads being recording devices found at the crime scene.
Cowboy is a 2013 Malayalam-language thriller film directed by P. Balachandrakumar starring Asif Ali, Khushbu and master Pankaj Krrishna in lead roles while Bala and Sai Kumar play the main antagonists and Mythili, Jagathy Sreekumar, Anoop Chandran and Indrans play supporting roles. The film is produced by K. Anil Mathew, and music is done by Benny Ignatious, and the background score is by Rajamani. The film is inspired by the 1995 Hollywood thriller Nick of Time. Cowboy released to a lukewarm critical reception and was a commercial failure. The film was released on 15 February 2013.
Charlotte King is a fictional character from the Australian soap opera Home and Away, played by Erika Heynatz. She made her first screen appearance during the episode broadcast on 25 June 2015.
Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind is a 1980 Hong Kong crime film directed by Tsui Hark. The initial cut of the film was banned for its violence, generating public interest in the film that caused its edited version to become a box office success in Hong Kong.
Unhinged is a 2020 American action thriller film directed by Derrick Borte, from a screenplay by Carl Ellsworth. The film stars Russell Crowe, Caren Pistorius, Gabriel Bateman, Jimmi Simpson, and Austin P. McKenzie. It tells the story of a woman who, while on her way to drop her son off at school, is fired by a client over the phone in rush hour traffic, but is then terrorized by a violent and vengeance-obsessed stranger, following a hostile verbal altercation with him at a traffic light. This leads to the rest of the day involving the stranger targeting the woman's family and friends as revenge.
Infamous is a 2020 American crime thriller film written and directed by Joshua Caldwell. It stars Bella Thorne, Jake Manley, Amber Riley, Michael Sirow and Marisa Coughlan. It follows the story of two young lovers robbing their way across the southern United States starting in Florida, posting their exploits to social media, and gaining fame and followers as a result.
Sara-Nicole Morales was shot and killed in the front yard of her mother's house in Orange City, Florida, United States. While returning home from her job at a Volusia County library, she had become embroiled in a road rage incident with a local motorcyclist, during which she had intentionally struck his vehicle with hers, an act witnessed by two nearby motorists. The three notified police and followed her to the house, where she confronted them with her fiancé's pistol. The motorcyclist drew his own gun and shot her five times.