The noir tradition has taken such a beating in recent decades that it's probably smart to delineate between neo-noirs that respect and build on the subgenre's shadowy foundation of lies and betrayal, and the parasitic faux-noirs that cop all the attitude and themes without contributing anything in return. For example, John Dahl has directed some wonderfully tough, smart, funny contemporary neo-noirs like Kill Me Again, Red Rock West, and The Last Seduction. The middling new Milwaukee, Minnesota, on the other hand, qualifies as 100 percent faux-noir. It recycles much from classic thrillers but has little to add, unless having a mildly retarded yet philosophical fishing prodigy as a protagonist qualifies as a major contribution to the hard-boiled tradition.
Barbershop's Troy Garity—son of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden—stars as the film's wildly implausible hero, a slow-witted but big-hearted gent who's amassed a small fortune in fishing-tournament winnings without ever leaving his native Wisconsin. Garity's domineering mother keeps him on a short leash, but after her mysterious death, he's suddenly surrounded by predators out for his fortune, primarily third-rate femme fatale Alison Folland, a hooker (who, sure enough, develops a heart of gold late in the film) masquerading as a Time reporter, and Randy Quaid, a mustachioed traveling salesman claiming to be Garity's long-lost, ostensibly dead father. Seemingly inspired equally by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man and Adam Sandler in repressed nice-guy mode, Garity's holy fool seems more like a ridiculous plot point than a human being, and his fortune feels like a particularly arbitrary example of what Alfred Hitchcock used to call a McGuffin.
Milwaukee, Minnesota doesn't come alive at all until halfway in, when Quaid begins wearily sizing up Garity and Folland. There follows a neat sequence where Quaid gives Garity a hug, then peers coldly at the image in a mirror and briskly checks his watch. The scene would qualify as just another big, obvious move in a film full of them, but Quaid smartly underplays it, exerting just enough energy to bring across his character's sinister machinations. That masterful moment sticks out like an oasis in the Sahara of a decidedly non-masterful film. True noirs, classic and contemporary, reveal the misery and selfishness lurking underneath society's sunny façade, but faux-noirs like Milwaukee, Minnesota are simply miserable, revealing nothing more than the bleak emptiness of their creators' imaginations.