AMERICAN PERFEKT: Did it influence No Country for Old Men?

American Perfekt is yet another example that drawing from good influences and having an excellent cast cannot patch up script holes, and that strangeness alone holds no real value.

Sandra is driving along provincial roads near the Mojave Desert to meet her younger sister, Alice. During her journey, another driver forces her into a sudden maneuver, resulting in severe damage to her car. A passing driver, Jake—a psychiatrist from Los Angeles—comes to her aid, arranges for roadside assistance, and offers to drive Sandra to the nearest motel. When they run out of gas, they continue their journey hitchhiking, only to unwittingly board the very same car whose driver—a conman named Santini—had previously caused Sandra’s accident. The three of them stop at a motel, where a bond develops between Sandra and Jake, while Santini meets a local flirt, Rita. The next day, both Sandra and Santini vanish, leaving Jake to continue his journey alone. Meanwhile, the motel staff discovers a woman’s body in one of the rooms and informs the local sheriff, Noonan.

I recall a review of American Perfekt featured in the video section of Film magazine—it was either 1997 or 1998—when Paul Chart’s film was available on VHS under its original title. However, none of the local VHS rental stores carried it, and I only rediscovered it years later thanks to an internet user (I can’t recall on which site) who speculated that American Perfekt might have influenced the Coen brothers’ later masterpiece, based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel—No Country for Old Men (2007). That claim seems quite far-fetched: Chart was likely inspired by the early Coens, but I doubt the influence worked in reverse. The similarities are mostly limited to desert landscapes and a murderer who makes decisions based on the flip of a coin. But even that concept isn’t original—characters like Two-Face from Batman and the protagonist of Luke Rhinehart’s novel The Dice Man employed a similar method of decision-making.

The idea that this film influenced the Coens should be dismissed—especially since Chart himself is more of an imitator than an innovator. American Perfekt is a bizarre mix of thriller, road movie, and black comedy. Besides the Coens, Chart heavily borrows from David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, and films like Kalifornia (1993) by Dominic Sena and U Turn (1997) by Oliver Stone. These are solid influences (perhaps excluding Tarantino), but in Chart’s hands, they turn into a chaotic parade of borrowed ideas and clichés. American Perfekt starts off promisingly but quickly falls into the rut of a derivative and predictable story about an eccentric serial killer. The plot is thin and artificially bizarre, and for a thriller, it lacks both suspense and tension. It’s a shame about the strong cast—Robert Forster, Amanda Plummer, Fairuza Balk, Paul Sorvino, and David Thewlis—who are left with nothing substantial to work with, as the weak script allows neither the story nor the characters to develop.