A dirt-poor Texas independent film, and dirt-gritty in its blown-up 35mm print. Like another nearby independent film -- Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train -- it has an interesting structure not always (or often) matched by its details. Something like a La Ronde multiplied by ten or fifteen: the camera follows one character for a few minutes, then switches to another one for the next few minutes, then another and another, forming a relay that lasts from dawn to dawn in Austin, Texas. (Once dropped, a character never reappears.) What unites all these people is their fecklessness: a conspiracy theorist, a Nelson Mandela T-shirt hawker, a conceptual artist, a video addict, an ex-con ("I may live badly, but at least I don't have to work to do it"), an old anarchist, etc., etc. The universal level of looniness gets a bit tiresome, but a definite lifestyle, a milieu, a type, a definition of the title, begins to take shape. Written and directed by Richard Linklater. (1991) — Duncan Shepherd
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