Don’t Come Knocking

Two decades after Paris, Texas, Wim Wenders directs another Sam Shepard script, this time with the writer starring, and at times the deja vu is overwhelming. Shepard plays yet another Marlboro man with a fractured past, a dissolute western star who walks out on an expensive movie shoot, visits his mother (Eva Marie Saint), learns he may have an illegitimate child, and sets off for Montana to find him, dogged by another illegitimate child (Sarah Polley). Shooting in ‘Scope, Wenders still has a handsome eye for landscapes, and he works wonders with Butte. But the theatrical monologues come close to defeating him, and only Jessica Lange, as one of Shepard’s abandoned girlfriends, manages to avoid cliche. With Gabriel Mann and Tim Roth. R, 122 min. (JR)

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