The jet-fueled sequel to the 1986 flyboy classic has charisma to burn, soaring airplane indulgences and a narrative that honors the past while breaking the sound barrier as it shifts to the future. Her health has not held up, but her performances sure have, as friends and costars like Jeff Bridges, Angie Dickinson and Stacy Keach attest in the film. She was delightful as Lex Luthor’s moll in two Superman films, then her career tanked. As Lenny Bruce’s stripper wife, Honey, in Lenny (1974), she was better than Dustin Hoffman, winning best actress at Cannes and a BAFTA for most promising newcomer in addition to earning an Oscar nomination for best actress. Perrine gave Montana sweetness and dignity, anchoring the fantasy and balancing Billy’s weird blankness with radiant goodness.
A Las Vegas dancer, she won fame in 1972 as Billy Pilgrim’s porn-star sweetheart, Montana Wildhack, in Slaughterhouse-Five, a character Kurt Vonnegut insultingly based on his Iowa Writers’ Workshop student and mistress Loree Rackstraw (who was more literary than Vonnegut, and his kindly friend for life). Stacey Souther’s moving 36-minute film, a winner at the American Documentary Film Festival, chronicles the short, luminous career of Valerie Perrine, 78.
