Did the business-savvy Weinstein Brothers plan this project as a tax write-off? How else to explain the greenlighting of this soggy, monumentally morose excuse for a movie? And with a prissy, passive cry-baby as its central character? That's Sean Penn, improbably cast, with lipstick and eyeliner and a bad hair dye, as Cheyenne, a sad-sack ex-rock star (we learn nothing of his music) who has spent 20 years hanging about his Dublin estate feeling sorry for himself. Somehow, a lunatic plot line emerges: Cheyenne, we discover, is Jewish, which sends him meandering through America seeking revenge on the hidden Nazi who humiliated his father at Auschwitz. Believe that, and believe the Pope is pro-choice. Frances McDormand is absurdly wrong as Cheyenne's loving wife, but there's a fun campy scene with David Byrne as himself, and five good minutes with Harry Dean Stanton in a diner.
