A quite impressive music video whose major appeal to cinema lovers comes from the people involved inside of it rather than the ones behind it. While I'm not
familiar with The Why Store neither the repertoire, I only got here after checking credits for artists involved with this and I wanted to see what it was all about.
Directed by Oscar winning director John Schlesinger ("Midnight Cowboy", "Marathon Man") and starring Chris Cooper, Devon Sawa and Beverly D'Angelo this short film has a powerful drama story revolving a conflicted father (Cooper) who can't deal with his teenage son (Devon) and while on service as a cop he beats up a teenage boy in a brutal manner. The cop overreacted his approach since he saw someone similar to his young son and wanted to leash out his anger to someone.
While the music is quite alright, the thing that kept me going was the strong acting bits. Cooper is one of my favorite actors of all time because he has the ability to do anything, and his expressions convey countless emotions that cannot be read in one exact way and if he's playing a father figure be ready to see a character who always have deep problems with his son. One clear example of such description is the amazing "American Beauty" as the repressed colonel. I urge you to watch the film twice just for his performance alone since there's a plot twist involved and on a second view of the film you'll understand that he's giving clues to his real self that cannot be seen on one view alone. It's never about what he says, it's always about what he does with his eyes, his gestures and expressions. There's always some double meaning and if he's awesome doing those things.
And here, as the title character, though it's hard to figure out the reasoning behind his contempt for his son but you'll see a lot of pain in the man.
With a longer running time where bits of dialogues could be inserted, this could be even better. But for what it shows, this is quite interesting to follow and a fine opportunity to see a character actor playing the lead for a change. 8/10.
Directed by Oscar winning director John Schlesinger ("Midnight Cowboy", "Marathon Man") and starring Chris Cooper, Devon Sawa and Beverly D'Angelo this short film has a powerful drama story revolving a conflicted father (Cooper) who can't deal with his teenage son (Devon) and while on service as a cop he beats up a teenage boy in a brutal manner. The cop overreacted his approach since he saw someone similar to his young son and wanted to leash out his anger to someone.
While the music is quite alright, the thing that kept me going was the strong acting bits. Cooper is one of my favorite actors of all time because he has the ability to do anything, and his expressions convey countless emotions that cannot be read in one exact way and if he's playing a father figure be ready to see a character who always have deep problems with his son. One clear example of such description is the amazing "American Beauty" as the repressed colonel. I urge you to watch the film twice just for his performance alone since there's a plot twist involved and on a second view of the film you'll understand that he's giving clues to his real self that cannot be seen on one view alone. It's never about what he says, it's always about what he does with his eyes, his gestures and expressions. There's always some double meaning and if he's awesome doing those things.
And here, as the title character, though it's hard to figure out the reasoning behind his contempt for his son but you'll see a lot of pain in the man.
With a longer running time where bits of dialogues could be inserted, this could be even better. But for what it shows, this is quite interesting to follow and a fine opportunity to see a character actor playing the lead for a change. 8/10.
