“Albo gator… sacrifice for a gain.”

Justin’s rating: “Dino’s Last Stand” is a bit on the nose, don’t you think?

Justin’s review: You guys, I don’t like to squirm while watching TV or movies. Call me prude, call me weak, call me a hairy gorilla with some serious silverback… I don’t care. If a viewing experience causes me physical and psychological distress because it’s overly cringe, gory, or tense, I want out of that situation ASAP. Unless, of course, I’m a mutant reviewer who has vowed to undergo mental torture in the name of film reviews.

Besides, with this kind of star-studded lineup, how could I avoid Albino Alligator? We’ve got Matt Dillon, Faye Dunaway, Gary Sinise, Joe Mantegna, William Fichtner, Viggo Mortensen, John Spencer, Skeet Ulrich, and M. Emmet Walsh parading through this ’90s indie crime thriller. That’s really hard to resist.

A trio of robbers (Dillon, Sinise, and Fichtner) race away from a holdup gone wrong. They stumble into the worst possible place to wait things out: a bar near closing time that happens to harbor a fugitive (Mortensen) that the FBI dearly wants. Cue a desperate hostage situation where tensions rise inside and outside, with jittery barflies, trigger-happy feds, a dying criminal, and a sociopath maniac desperate to avoid prison turning this place into a pressure cooker. To make matters worse, there’s only one exit and no clear way out for any of them.

It’s not an overly complicated setup, trusting to the brewing drama of this (mostly) one-room situation to carry the viewer’s interest. If that viewer isn’t squirming so bad that he or she squirms right out of the room, that is. But it is fascinating, because the key question for all parties is what any of them will do to survive and come out on top. What will they sacrifice? What morals will they violate?

As the leader of the criminals, Matt Dillon is sort of in the middle of his maturing as an actor — not great but not horrible. He seems like a somewhat nice guy who got caught up with the bad crowd and would rather things not be worse off than they already are. It’s just that he can’t quite carry every scene without coming across as somewhat juvenile, which is exacerbated by the pool of incredible talent around him, like Sinese (who at this point in his career didn’t have to be doing indies but seemed to relish them).

Fichtner is rather chilling as the amoral Law, who’s possible (but not definitely) the most dangerous person in the room. Dunaway does just OK as a threatened bartender, Spencer reprises his “drunk dude” role that he does when he’s not playing a creep, and Ulrich atones for being mean in Scream, but it was Mortensen (and his silly accent) whom my eyes kept evaluating. After all, this was a few years before he’d get his big break in the Lord of the Rings movies, so he was merely doing these bit parts and thankful for them.

Albino Alligator continually feels like it’s teetering between being a great unknown movie and a pretty creaky one deserving of being unknown. The premise and performances are certainly brimming with potential, but this is a little too slow and uneven to make good on, say, more than 60% of that potential. It needed some more energy — some of that Aaron Sorkin dynamic walk-and-talk — instead of having stationary people rattle off dialogue like they’re auditioning for Reservoir Dogs 2.

Intermission!

• I dig that credit font. I reminded me of the cute cursive fonts we’d download on Windows 95 back in the day.
• “I didn’t know you could say that many words in a row.”
• The overhead shot of the cop flying out of the front car window
• “If you don’t bite, then don’t bark, doggy-dog.”
• “Menthol. I hate menthol.” “I know.”
• Hey cool, a secret passageway
• The news lady’s face as the ATF lead keeps swearing on camera