Actor, director, screenwriter, musician, pants model. You could say Vincent Gallo is the archetypal jack of all trades, master of none. In Buffalo 66 he puts all of those bullet points on his CV to use at one point or another (yup, theres even a brief moment where the knacks are on show) and, though the end result is watchable enough, its fair to say he struggles to excel in any of his chosen departments. Perhaps he should have created the ultimate in word-of-mouth by taking on the job of reviewing his own film as well (after all, he seems to do practically everything else).
In front of the camera hes Billy, a whiney, obnoxious pratt of a man whos no sooner completed a five-year spell in the nick than hes kidnapping sullen dance student Layla (Christina Ricci) and forcing her to pretend shes his wife for the benefit of his batty parents (Ben Gazzara and Anjelica Huston). Well, I say forcing, but she doesnt exactly put up much of a fight. In fact, she doesnt try to escape even once, an implausibility which is just one of the factors weighing this tale down.
Behind the camera, Gallo seems obsessed with littering his project with as much unnecessary stylistic nonsense as possible, from superimposed flashbacks, to strange Matrix-style bullet-time freeze-framing, to over-excessive switches in point-of-view.
The main saving grace is that the story itself is a decent one, with a nice line in dark humour. Unfortunately, as with everything else about the film, it eventually drowns in its own self-indulgence. By the time its reached the 90 minute mark, its successfully completed the transition from quirky and entertaining to tiresome and annoying and thats when you realise theres still another 20 minutes left.