SEMI-PRETENTIOUS `SUICIDE' DIES FROM OVERDOSE OF SELF-INDULGENCE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

``The Last Time I Committed Suicide'' is based on the ``Great Sex Letter'' that Beat Generation icon Neal Cassady wrote to his friend and exploit chronicler Jack Kerouac. As depicted in this semi-pretentious, sort of interesting feature directing debut from playwright Stephen Kay, it was quite a letter.

Cassady, the template for Dean Moriarty in Kerouac's classic novel ``On the Road,'' was a hard-living womanizer who ran with the Beat pack but never achieved his comrades' literary success. Eventually domesticated in a way William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and even his fellow Merry Prankster Ken Kesey never truly were, Cassady had one of the more romantic deaths, freezing alongside a Mexican rail line at the still beautiful age of 42.

But that wasn't the first time he committed suicide. The film recounts affairs in 1947 Denver, when the 20-year-old, strange-talking ladies man was perfecting his car-theft skills while working the night shift at a tire plant.

Played by Thomas Jane, Cassady starts out as the relatively true blue boyfriend of Joan (``Basquiat's'' Claire Forlani). For some reason, though, his impassioned odes to her grilled cheese sandwiches don't prevent the young woman from attempting to kill herself. Unable to deal with Joan's long, touch-and-go hospital stay, Neal wanders out of her life and into the orbit of pool-shark pal Harry (Keanu Reeves, better than usual).

When Joan unexpectedly turns up one night many months later, Neal seems sincere in his expressed desire to do the ring-exchange thing with her. But a chance encounter with bad influence Harry and a fatal phone call to an underage ex-flame (Gretchen Mol, enjoyably lascivious) threaten to reorient Neal back onto that road.

The last third of the movie, done pretty much in real time inside a lonely, Christmas Eve saloon, is a masterful little bit of riff acting and emotionally nuanced directing work. But too much of what leads up to it is self-consciously arty and, worse, spoken in the kind of vernacular that was revelatory to read in the 1950s but sounds phonier than Valspeak in 1997. Jump cuts, Bop score, unnecessary transitions from color to black and white - all the obvious tropes of Beat-era affectation get too much of a workout here.

Yet Kay does prove again and again that he's well-attuned to the human emotions beneath the drippy cool poses. It's when he stops trying to make the cinematic equivalent of a Kerouac novel that he comes close to approximating a great writer's insights.

THE FACTS

The film: ``The Last Time I Committed Suicide'' (R; sex, nudity).

The stars: Thomas Jane, Keanu Reeves, Claire Forlani, Gretchen Mol, Marg Helgenberger.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Stephen Kay, based on a letter by Neal Cassady. Produced by Edward Bates and Louise Rosner. Released by Roxie Releasing.

Running time: One hour, 35 minutes.

Playing: Music Hall, Beverly Hills; Los Feliz, Los Feliz.

Our rating: Two Stars.

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Photo

Photo: A chance encounter with bad influence Harry (Keanu Reeves) threatens to reorient Neal (Thomas Jane) back onto a troubled road in ``The Last Time I Committed Suicide.''