It's hard not to like Harvey Keitel. He's talented, he champions "little" films, and he's appeared in the directorial debuts of some of our most revered filmmakers. But every actor in Hollywood has made bad movies and Keitel is no exception. What is exceptional is just how many he's made, and how disastrous he's been in them. Considering that he is the pre-eminent risk-taker of his generation, it's hardly fair to criticize the man for some of his more dubious choices in recent years.

But Holy Smoke proved that Harvey Keitel's suffers from more than just faulty radar.

In fairness to Keitel, it hasn't been an easy road. When Mean Streets hit in 1973, it marked the arrival of three new kids in town: Keitel, Robert DeNiro, and director Martin Scorsese. While DeNiro's and Scorsese's stock skyrocketed, Keitel's, for whatever reason, did not. In 1980, while DeNiro and Scorsese were getting the shit lauded out of them for Raging Bull, Keitel was disrupting Farrah Fawcett's food-harvesting experiments in Saturn 3.

One would think that the 1980s would have been the perfect time in Keitel's life to take career chances. It was the black hole of his career as well as that of many of his contemporaries. What could possibly have been lower than his guest appearance on ABC's short-lived The Ellen Burstyn Show in 1986 (besides starring in it)?

Harvey Keitel can fairly be described as enigmatic, which, unfortunately, makes him a hard sell in Hollywood. As a result, he is likely passed over in favor of one of his contemporaries more often than any of them. He's not as intense as DeNiro, not as commanding as Tommy Lee Jones, not as exacting as Al Pacino, not as assured as Gene Hackman, not as hard-boiled as Clint Eastwood, not as scrappy as Joe Pesci, not as avuncular as Peter Fonda, not as wizened as Morgan Freeman, not as funny as Alan Arkin, not as genial as Hector Elizondo, not as demented as Dennis Hopper, not as normal as Joe Mantegna, not as arrogant as Michael Douglas, not as sentimental as Richard Dreyfuss, not as suave as Sean Connery, not much like Robert Duvall, not at all like Dustin Hoffman, and not as Nicholson as Nicholson. And despite his penchant for nudity and weeping, he's still not as vulnerable as Nick Nolte.

But by 1992, Harvey Keitel was clearly given his due after the successes of Thelma & Louise, Bugsy , and Reservoir Dogs. His new high price tag allowed him to pay the rent with schlock like Sister Act and afforded him the clout to do whatever he wished. And he wished to do strange things. (Since his publicist was unavailable at press time one can only guess at the logic behind some of his choices during the '90s.)

Take Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, for instance. Perhaps Keitel was challenged by the struggle for redemption by a morally twisted cop. Or perhaps, after playing second fiddle to Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ, he wanted his turn as a savior and he figured Bad Lieutenant and its "nude crucifixion" scene was the closest he'd ever come.

His indignity in that film earned him a few prestigious awards, but it may have only encouraged him. His follow-ups included another Abel Ferrara collaboration, a crusty rag called Dangerous Game which, astonishingly, was even more bankrupt of humanity than Bad Lieutenant. Under-directed in the underwritten From Dusk Till Dawn, he grunted his way through as best he could. And he earned a special achievement award for silliness in Monkey Trouble, climaxed by the moment when, dressed as a gypsy, he barked at Thora Birch, "What have you done to my monkey, sweetheart?"

As much as these movies tarnished whatever personal or professional constitution he follows for selecting projects, quirky or otherwise, there were plenty to restore its luster. He made some great films and was great in them: Ulysses' Gaze, Smoke, Imaginary Crimes. His best work'daybe the best of his career?was in The Piano. It is a testament to his talent and Jane Campion's writing and directing that there was nothing but dignity to a performance replete with nudity and mud. One would think another collaboration between Keitel and Campion would be a sure thing.

Sigh.

You have to respect an actor who dares to go where few others go. After a certain number of incidences, however, one begins to wonder if it's really that daring. For instance, in a youth- and ectomorph-obsessed society, exposing a middle-aged body in one movie is a sign of courage; in two movies, a sign of self-assurance. But repeatedly? Isn't that, y'know, weird? Maybe, but we're talking about Harvey Keitel here. Let us not judge.

But after Holy Smoke, he's asked for it.

Apart from a chance to work with the gifted Campion again, or star opposite the appealing Kate Winslet, there couldn't possibly be any logic behind Keitel's choosing Holy Smoke. The premise is intriguing enough: An expert cultist deprogrammer, PJ Waters (Keitel), is hired by an Australian woman to "exit" her wayward daughter, Ruth (Winslet) from an Indian cult. But PJ, introduced as a sure-fire professional, mysteriously unravels during his three-day session with Ruth in a remote house in the Australian outback. That's putting it kindly.

Keitel's arrival in the film doesn't portend any challenge he hasn't conquered before. PJ's initial dealings with Ruth's family and friends exhibits Keitel's familiar impassivity, stoicism, and mild disgust. The early moments between PJ and Ruth get off to a promising start. Then the taut psychological marathon one expects promptly degenerates. On Night Two, at Ruth's most vulnerable moment, the best exiter in the business bangs her, then is so wrecked over it that he never recovers. Keitel continues down this slippery slope on a journey that transcends mere indignity to utter humiliation. The irony Campion was going for, regardless of its illogic, was plainly outweighed by the absurdity of Keitel's image. By film's end, he was bidding goodbye to the 1990s crapped out in the back of a pickup truck, wearing a red dress.

The heartache isn't that Keitel's fans have paid good money to see this fright. It's that this movie, the most recent and most glaring abomination in what is a lengthy series of abominations, indicates that he is fully aware of what he's doing. Whether he's afraid of success and is trying to sabotage it, he honestly feels that these are provocative experiments, or is just paying back favors remains open to debate. Regardless, Holy Smoke represents Harvey Keitel at his most clumsy and exploited, and Harvey Keitel should have known better. In fact, he probably did. That's what made it so aggravating to watch.

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