Mere weeks after its release at the video store where I work, Slipstream had earned a fairly bad reputation with the more regular customers. Some said it was physically impossible to watch. So, being the inquisitive movie hound that I am, I couldn't turn down the opportunity to check things out for myself, especially since the movie seemed to possess oodles of promise. My verdict? While Slipstream is definitely one of the most daring and different films in many a year, it's also one of the most irksome and self-indulgent ones to boot.

Buried somewhere within this erratically-edited husk of a film is the story of Felix Bonhoeffer (Anthony Hopkins, who also unexpectedly serves as writer and director as well). A renowned screenwriter who lives quite the cushy existence, old Felix finds his services called upon when the temperamental star (Christian Slater) of his latest script drops dead right on the set, which requires massive rewrites. Unfortunately for our hero, this incident takes place at a time when his mind has begun to go haywire. Felix's personal life and the world his characters inhabit start to blend with each other, sending him on a journey between the two as his sanity commences to crumble. Be it the movie's  blisteringly hot location or Felix's old age catching up with him, the man finds himself heading down a road from which there may be no return. 

Unless you've seen Slipstream for yourself, dear reader, you have no idea how tough it was to come up with the above synopsis. When the film began hitting the festival circuit, Hopkins claimed he meant the film to be a "joke." I can only presume he meant this to mean the itty-bitty traces of satire aimed at show business that occasionally peek through the story's cracks, because if Slipstream is Hopkins putting us on, I'd hate to see what happens when he's being dead-serious. Although this is as confused and muddled a film as any I've seen, what makes it all the more troubling is that the whole she-bang was overseen by people who should've known better. I'd expect something like Slipstream to come from an upstart filmmaker who goes way overboard in applying artistic touches, not from one of the greatest living actors of our time.

This is a movie defiantly refusing to be pinned down, both thematically and by standard Hollywood conventions, which is all well and good, until the film adopts an almost mocking tone, challenging you to understand it when it doesn't really provide anything to understand. Slipstream's intent may be to put the viewer in the place of a man undergoing a serious mental breakdown, but instead of building up sympathy for the poor guy and allowing us to survey his situation, Hopkins throws every editing trick in the book right in our face. The effect gets very irritating, very fast, with Hopkins doing a good job of placing us in Felix's shoes but never giving us a chance to understand the fellow. The story is a Lynchian nightmare with as many twists, turns, and loop-de-loops as a rollercoaster. 

Still, shining through all the visual madness clogging up the story is a pretty decent cast headed by Hopkins in a solid turn as a man blissfully unaware that he's slowly bidding his sanity farewell. Most of the other actors (including  John Turturro and Michael Clarke Duncan) are so good, they deserve a better movie. 

Should I let Slipstream slide because, as impenetrable as it is, the film boasts decent acting and always had me wondering where it was going? No, because the more I think about it, the more the movie feels like 90 minutes of someone punching me in the face.

MY RATING: * 1/2 (out of ****)

(Released by Sony Pictures and rated "R" for language and some violent images.)