Like any movie villain worth his salt, the devil always has more fun than any hero. In his numerous screen appearances, the big evil dude usually gets the best lines, the best clothes and the finest ironies. The good guys usually had the dubious honor of being morally upright, excruciatingly noble and totally boring.
That's why Mick Jagger never wrote a song about them.
Unfortunately, Needful Things dutifully follows this predictable path. ( So Mick probably won't do a song about it, either.) The strongest thing the movie has in its favor is Max von Sydow as a flippant Satan. His clothes are a bit shabby, but he drives an antique Mercedes. He even gets the girl, in a manner of speaking.
What von Sydow lacks is a film to go with his performance. He misses out on that one.
In Needful Things, the devil comes to Castle Rock, Maine posing as an antiques dealer. The town looks like it's stacked to the rafters with antiques, but the locals dash to his shop anyway. (Hey, he's the devil. He could sell ice to Eskimos.) With each purchase, the buyer is lured into a subtle pact that will pit neighbor against neighbor, husbands against wives and winos against their bartenders. (I don't know about Maine, but where I come from, this is business as usual.)
The town erupts into social anarchy, and a lot of characters we've never seen go smashing into each other with their pickup trucks. The only thing that stands between Castle Rock and the fiery pit is the town's sheriff (Ed Harris).
The sheriff is pure, noble and slightly dense. He's also apt to climb onto a soap box and set the town straight with a good tongue-lashing. In the end, though, he gets the girl too (but not quite in the manner he expected).
The funniest part of Needful Things is its coming attractions trailer. Virtually all of von Sydow's best lines are used in it, and it was edited with a better sense of pacing than the movie, which drags.
Needful Things wastes the talents of its scriptwriter, W.D. Richter, as well as those of von Sydow and Harris.
Richter is one of the wittiest fantasy writers in Hollywood, but you wouldn't know it from this movie. All of his best stuff is in the trailer, too. Maybe they'll bring the previews back.
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