Land Of Plenty

Written by Wim Wenders and shot on digital video Land Of Plenty appears to be intended as a post-9/11 drama in the director's familiar discursive style but somewhat disconcertingly comes across in places as a post-adolescent road comedy. It is hard to believe that this is what Wenders intended but then its equally hard to see it any other way.

The film recounts the activities of a paranoid ex-Vietnam veteran (John Diehl) who drives around downtown L.A. in a beaten-up camper van equipped with army surplus surveillance equipment looking for anti-American operatives. In this he is assisted by his junk-yard dog buddy, Jimmy (Richard Edson), and his dreamy-eyed God-fearing niece, Lana (Michelle Williams). The narrative conveniences are such that despite the purported concern with the state of the Union it seems that the main interest is really in the relationship between the older man (a kind of re-visiting of Harry Dean Stanton's character in Paris, Texas) and the younger woman and had Wenders stuck with this and given us less of the tin-pot anti-terrorist activities the film might have been less disposable.

 

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