Dolan's Cadillac

"He's the King of Nowhere."

That's how the opening monologue of "Dolan's Cadillac" ends as it describes the villainous Dolan. It also describes currently the actor playing Dolan, one Mister Christian Slater. Once he was the hot stuff, now he is in the limbo of the not hot. It's not that he isn't trying, just recently he tried to do a Kiefer Sutherland and make his bones in TV. Didn't work. Don't despair Mr. Slater, I hear Mr. Boll is still thinking of "Alone in the Dark 3."

Meanwhile we have him in this adaption of a Stephen King short story. Back to that monologue, with its talk of how Dolan's gaze can make your prostate go bad, or how he can command the wolves and crows, it certainly make this King of Nowhere sound like King's favorite bogeyman Flagg. Unfortunately, Slater doesn't do a stare that makes a prostate go bad (please contact Ian MacShane for a piss curdling glare), what he does instead is paradoxically brings Dolan to humanity. Dolan believes he's not a bad guy, he's just a business man. He deals in "units" not "sexual slaves." There are moments where he almost engages in the viewers sympathy even as he does horrid things. Near the end he contemplates smuggling children into the states, and by the look of him you can tell it doesn't sit pretty. Oh, he'll still do it. The profits good and he's a business man.

The King of Nowhere.

The story is about how this King of Nowhere kills the wife a teacher. The teacher of course wants revenge. In one early scene he buys himself the ultra dirty harry hand gun and goes out to a range in the desert. He takes aim, misses, and the recoil knocks him on his ass as the stray bullet actually causes a mini avalanche. It is a scene both pathethic and curiously awe inspiring. This guy as he is now can never take down Dolan, he just doesn't know it at first. He spends his days following him, learning everything. But Dolan is not an easy target, and drives in a super armored tank of a custom cadillac.

One day Dolan notices the little annoyance behinds him, and teaches the teacher a lesson. This is the one true evil act Dolan does with malaciousness, and oddly it is an act of seeming mercy. He doesn't kill the teacher, because he recognizes that the teacher is a failure. Too cowardly to kill either Dolan or himself. He talks about the arc of descent and how he is going to let the teacher follow that arc till he hits the bottom. He condemns the teacher to life.

The teacher is crushed by this, but what Dolan didn't know is that the teacher came from strong stock. His ancestors helped built the railroad. The teach goes and joins a road crew in the desert summer heat. Everyone laughs at him, saying he's going to pass out on the road. He doesn't. He's driven and he has a plan.

I can see how this part of the story must so pleased Stephen King as he wrote it. The teacher's revenge is equal parts Protestant work ethic, and art. I won't say what happens next, but it is both one of the most satisfying and improbable revenges in film history. Mr. Poe would have been most pleased.

In the end, the teacher literally made Dolan the King of Nowhere.