The person who compared this film to Bladerunner is not only doing this film a disservice, but is so far from the mark as to be untrue. The chief protagonist is a cop true, and though initially spurned, he does get the girl in the end, but that's about where it ends...
From the opening strains of the muted trumpet, and Marianne Faithfull's beautifuly broken voice, this film is a masterpiece, it's moody, quirky, low key and not without a little menace, especially when Hilly Blue "puts the anchor" on Solo, "they should all blow each other's balls off, make my life easier..." to quote Lt. Gunther.
It's everything that Bladerunner isn't, if anything it's set in some alternate vision of a disfunctional 50's & 80's combined, down at heel low life's, trashy outfits, too much drab neon & hairspray, allied with a little mob glamour and modern art.
I guess I just feel for the characters, Hawk's hunger for a life he never had, the Zen stillness of Wanda, the wild eyed innocence of Georgia and the weirdness that is Coop, Solo freaking out as a Bhudhist, and last but not least, Divine in a suit... "let everybody get what they deserve..."
It's not a fast movie, or an ensemble piece, but at some deep level it resonates.
"what are you looking at?" "you a cop?" "you know damn well I'm not a cop" "that's what I'm looking at then, a woman who isn't a cop..."
It's the film I watch when I get down, I've lost track of the number of times I've watched it, I caught it first at the ICA West Bank in London, on it's last showing before they started a series of Mexican masked wrestling bario movies :) I bought it recently on DVD in a shop in Schipol airport after being delayed in Amsterdam for two hours, I'd been looking for it for years at that point... Even Amazon had it on back order.
It's really a wonderful movie, from icy lake to mountain road, I always come away from it happy, I guess you can ask no more from a movie than that.
Trouble in Mind
1985
Comedy / Crime / Drama / Thriller

Trouble in Mind
1985
Comedy / Crime / Drama / Thriller
Synopsis
In the metropolis of Rain City which is run under a military state, Wanda's Café is the meeting point for several individuals, who, in the words of Lt. Gunther of the police department, are converging on "the shit (they're) wallowing in". Former Rain City police officer John Hawkins - Hawk to his friends - has just been released from prison where he served eight years for murder, a crime to which he readily admits. He killed Fat Adolph, a mobster, in an effort to clean up the streets and protect the ones he loved. He has returned to Wanda's - Wanda who was his former lover - to restart his life. Straightforward Wanda still loves Hawk, but is not in love with him, and as such offers him a place to stay with no strings. Wanda has just hired largely innocent Georgia to work in the café. Penniless Georgia and her husband Coop have just arrived in Rain City with their infant son Spike in the run-down camper in which they live. They believed moving to the city - their first time ever in ...
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Bladerunner?
once upon a time...in the future
This is a great piece of atmospheric mid-budget film-making. Alan Rudolph and his production team successfully utilize the architecture of Seattle and its rain-slicked streets to bring to life the funky Neo-noir metropolis known as Rain City, inhabited by a set of off-beat characters, my favorite of which is a gangster played by the one and only DIVINE, in his only male-gendered role. He even gets to say the films best line: "Everyone wants to go to Heaven but no one wants to die!"
This is a film that is just begging for a DVD release. As others have mentioned, the audience for this film is definitely out there.
Alan Rudolph's best film holds up admirably.
"Trouble in Mind" is one of those movies that only reveals its greatness about the third time you see it; a wealth of details which, on first viewing, strike the perceptive viewer as scatterbrained or irrelevant, unfold on closer inspection into a rich, lushly imagined fantasy world, and dialogue which at first sounds precious or forced becomes endlessly quotable. It's hard to be an Alan Rudolph "fan," as his work is decidedly uneven; but on this picture, which followed the critical and commercial success of "Choose Me," he is at the peak of his powers. And, if none of this convinces you, you should check this one out for the performances, not least among which is Divine's startling turn as coldblooded (male) gangster Hilly Blue (worthy of awards, in a better world than this).