Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

An unexpected masterpiece

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

just re-watched for the first time since it came out (well 6m later from blockbuster on VHS!) and every bit as much fun as the first time.Great performances (aah! teri! sigh. before she was a skellington covered in parchment) and a knowing wink at Hollywood mores. My lad said, "everyone's bad in this!" the perspective of time puts to rest the PF comparison, love both but there's a diff between wry and smart-arsed pleased with yourself humour.and delighted that the thread is still active !! not a masterpiece but a little gem

2 days in the Valley tries to go for the Quentin Tarantino dollar with a crime story with interlinked characters that starts off with a murder in the LA valley.James Spader is the smart and ruthless assassin. It is hard to think that he is the old, balding man from The Blacklist. His accomplice is Charlize Theron in an early role looking blond and hot and she has a memorable tiff with Teri Hatcher who is a one time Olympian whose ex has been murdered.Jeff Daniels plays a racist detective who is trying to get Eric Stoltz to bust Chinese massage parlours. Danny Aiello plays a fall guy, Paul Mazursky is an over the hill filmmaker fallen on hard times.The film needed a more darkly comic edge but it works sufficiently well enough as a thriller with some twists, despicable villains and a few people with heart even if they are on the wrong side of the law.

I was answering a question about this film, which got me thinking about it, and I decided to write a review about it. In my opinion, this film is a crime classic, and I cannot believe "2 Days In The Valley" (TDINV) is not better known. If you look at the cast you will understand why. It starts with Lee Woods (James Spader), a super cool robotic hit man, and his partner Helga Svelgen (Charlize Theron), who is an ice cold evil blonde. They are hired to kill the husband of Becky Foxx (Teri Hatcher), so she can be on the US Olympic Team. They are promised $30,000 which is in the house to do so. Assisting them is hit man Dosmo Pizzo (Danny Aiello), who turns against them, when they set him up to be the fall guy. Spoilers ahead: Helga, gets killed by Becky after a nasty cat fight (She had it coming to her). Meanwhile, Dosmo ends up meeting Susan (Glenn Headley), who is constantly abused by her snobbish boss Allen Hopper (Greg Cruttwell), and treated worse than his dog. In my favorite scene, Dosmo discovers Susan is Italian (Something in six years, Greg never learned about her because he took no interest in her as a human being), and he cooks a meal (As he is holding them hostage), and has her sit at the table with him, while he eats on the floor with his dog. Other key characters are washed screenwriter Teddy Peppers (Paul Mazursky) who wanted to commit suicide after he found someone to take care of his dog, Nurse Audrey (Marsha Mason), and Detectives Strayer (Jeff Daniels) and Taylor (Eric Stolz).Spoilers: In the end, Lee ends up shooting Taylor, and Dosmo tries to rescue him, but cannot defeat Lee, and both will be killed, except Teddy shoots Lee dead. That action, enables him to get his confidence back and be able to start over with Audrey (Marsha Mason). One other point, about Peppers, you see in the final scene with Audrey, that he is very different than before, and will not only get a reward from the City for saving Taylor, but since he is in screenwriter, he can tell a story (leaving Dosmo & Susan out of course), that could get him a huge advance. Think about it: A Hollywood writer saves a cop, Warner Bros, Paramount, Universal and all the rest would bid on that. I would figure, that should be worth six figures to him. Dosmo and Susan end up with the $30,000 and will go to New York to open a pizza shop (Taylor lets him have it, because he was willing to take a bullet for him (Essentially the hit man turns good guy because of his conscious)). A key theme of the film is second chances for people who were essentially washed up: Dosmo, Susan, Teddy, Taylor (He would have been dead except for Dosmo & Teddy), Becky (Who gets away with it), and last, but not least, Strayer who is abusive cop, who almost shoots a black guy (Due to his temper) and wants to commit suicide, but because of thinking about his daughter does not (He gets a letter telling him to turn in his Badge, for psychological reasons, but although unhappy, at least he tolerates it, and has a chance to get his act cleaned up (Based on the theme of the film, he does). Basically a crime classic 10/10 stars.

"Two Days in the Valley" is an example of what has become known as "hyperlink cinema", the sort of film which involves several parallel, overlapping story lines. Films of this sort have become popular in the last few years, "Crash", "Babel" and Syriana" all being well-known examples. The introductory storyline involves two hit men, Lee Woods and Dosmo Pizzo, who kill a man named Roy Foxx while he lies in bed with his ex-wife, Becky, a former skiing champion. Woods then betrays Pizzo, shooting him and blowing up their car in order to set him up as the fall guy. Woods's plan misfires, however, and Pizzo survives, albeit injured. Gradually, more and more people become involved in the saga, starting with Woods's glamorous Norwegian girlfriend Helga and Allan Hopper, an art dealer, in whose house Pizzo seeks shelter. Others include Hopper's assistant Susan, his sister Audrey, a nurse, the two police officers to whom Becky reports the killing, and Teddy Peppers, a once-successful film producer now down on his luck and contemplating suicide.Teri Hatcher's performance as Becky earned her a nomination for Golden Raspberry Award for "Worst Supporting Actress". Whether that was fair or not is difficult to say, as I have never seen any other of the other nominated performances for that year, but this film did strengthen my general impression that Hatcher is an actress more at home on television than in the cinema. There were, however, a number of better acting contributions, notably from Danny Aiello as Pizzo, surprisingly sympathetic for a man whose occupation is killing people, Greg Cruttwell as the irascible Hopper, James Spader as the ruthless Woods, whose failure to finish off Pizzo shows that "ruthless" and "efficient" are not necessarily synonyms, and Jeff Daniels and Eric Stoltz as the two cops, Alvin Strayer and Wes Taylor. The two, who are not homicide detectives but vice cops who just happen to be in the area, have sharply contrasting characters. Alvin, the older of the two, is obsessed with driving all prostitutes out of the area, especially Asian immigrants, of whom he has a particular dislike. The young rookie Wes, by contrast, is more concerned with getting out of the vice squad and into homicide, and although Alvin berates him for his lack of knowledge of elementary police procedures it is Wes who comes up with the vital insight into the crime, namely that Becky might know more than she is telling. Charlize Theron, in her first major screen role, looks absolutely stunning as Helga.Despite its ostensibly serious subject-matter, the film never really feels like a traditional crime thriller. Although it revolves around a murder, it has more of the feel of a black comedy, not so much in the sense that it is played for laughs but rather in the sense that is played tongue in cheek. With its quirky, eccentric characters it betrays the influence of the films of Quentin Tarantino such as "Pulp Fiction". Black comedy can be something of an acquired taste, and is a difficult genre to get right, but director John Herzfeld does enough to keep the viewer's interest alive. "Two Days in the Valley" is not a great film, but it is refreshingly different enough from most run-of-the-mill Hollywood productions to make it worth watching. 6/10