THE JESUS ROLLS
John Turturro is back as The Big Lebowski’s Jesus Quintana. Strike or gutter ball?
Nobody fucks with the Jesus!” …except maybe the actor who brought him to life. John Turturro appeared for just two minutes in the Coen brothers’ classic The Big Lebowski (1998), yet his memorable cameo as champion bowler and convicted sex offender Jesus Quintana has become his most iconic role. Now, two decades on, Jesus takes centre stage in a belated spin-off, with Turturro also writing and directing.
Without Joel and Ethan on board, Turturro finds inspiration even further back - specifically, by remaking Bertrand Blier’s infamous 1974 sex comedy Les Valseuses (aka Going Places). There, Gérard Depardieu was the sleazy lothario involved in a ménage à trois. Here, it’s Jesus, newly released from prison, embarking on a series of episodic misadventures, with Bobby Cannavale and Audrey Tautou in tow.
It’s a bold but perplexing mash-up. Any point beyond fan service is hard to glean and even that is compromised.
Jesus’ exuberant antics soon wear thin amid the story’s latent misogyny. Surprisingly, Turturro misses the chance to subvert or update the boorish original, making for a charmless throwback to a world before #MeToo.
That Coen-y feeling exists only in a ridiculously strong cast, with Jon Hamm, Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon queuing up for whimsical walk-ons. But where the TV adap of Fargo emulated and extended its source’s depth, this is a pale facsimile of Lebowski’s picaresque perfection. Simon Kinnear