Queen of the Payday

Love Ranch

Directed by Taylor Hackford

Runtime: 117 min.

Love Ranch (“inspired by a true story”) should have been satirical. Instead, it’s just accidentally hilarious. Helen Mirren plays Grace, an American madam of a Reno, Nev., brothel (the titular Love Ranch), the same way she played the imperious schoolteacher in Teaching Mrs. Tingle—as a payday. There’s no apparent regard for the cultural nuances of a ruthless Western entrepreneur who wears furs in the desert, runs a shady enterprise, tolerates the dalliances of her husband/partner Charlie (Joe Pesci), slips into boxing management via the Argentine Bull, Armando Bruza (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), turns State’s witness for tax evasion, does jail time and then resumes whoremastering and ruling her stable as if she were the queen of England.

Director Taylor Hackford only finds a tone when he settles on sentimentality, and Mark Jacobson’s script visits several genres. But the lack of dramatic focus exposes the cast’s desperation. Pesci reprises his Casino runt with two semi-improvised Scorsesean rants (“It stinks in here!” and “I do fuckin’ love you!”).

Overdressed Mirren achieves the improbable: She makes the inane Lee Daniels film Shadowboxer (where she played another terminal, ruthless hag) seem like a credible portrait of a domineering cougar. (Although it was Cuba Gooding Jr.’s castrated male who gave that movie its only feeling.) Sinking lower than Lee Daniels takes some doing.