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WONDERLAND Send This Review to a Friend
What's the truth about the 1981 Los Angeles murders involving drug dealers and porn star John C. Holmes, known as Johnny Wad? "Wonderland," part of the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival and directed by James Cox from a screenplay he wrote with Captain Mauzner, Todd Samovitz and D. Loriston Scott, is told from different angles, and it is not about the porn life of Holmes. Rather, it's about sordid events that occurred after his career was over and before he was tried and acquitted.
Eric Bogosian plays drug boss Eddie Nash, who was tried for the murders but freed as a result of a hung jury, as in unable to agree, not in the well-hung category of Holmes, who was in more than 2000 hardcore films and died of an AIDS-related illness in 1988.
Val Kilmer gives a frantic, energetic performance as Holmes, with Lisa Kudrow as Sharon, his long-suffering estranged wife. The film is directed well enough, but seeing it is like sloshing through a sewer. It is nasty and violent, and it is difficult to work up sympathy for anyone aside from Sharon, or to much care what the truth was about the killings and to what extent Kilmer as Holmes might be believable when he tells his story.
"Wonderland" is steeped in off-putting characters, all well acted, and the sleazy atmosphere through which they move is competently depicted. But all the while I kept feeling that I would rather be somewhere else. A Lions Gate Film.
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