Reviews

Having read Dennis Lehane's strong crime book a few years ago, I knew that a very powerful and even upsetting film could be made from it. But Eastwood's coarse direction flattens out the story's effect and allows for some wildly uneven acting. You should come out of this film disturbed, but that certainly didn't happen for me.

Spoilers ahead.

There's enough punch in the material for the film to be effective as a detective thriller, and it's best in those scenes and the first scenes with Sean Penn's character Jimmy dealing with his daughter's murder.

But the book is also very good at evoking a sense of the insular lower middle class South Boston Irish Catholic community and the various personalities in it.

The film manages to do this to some degree, but some of the most interesting characters are given short shrift, particularly Annabeth (Laura Linney) who is Jimmy's wife.

In the book, she winds up being far more frightening a character than her husband, but Linney is barely in the film until the end where she has one Lady Macbeth-ish scene that comes out of nowhere. Linney also lacks a certain street-wise coarseness (as opposed to vulgarity) that the character needs.

Also, the film is not successful in making a clear connection between the abduction of Tim Robbins' character as a boy by two pedophiles and the present day occurrences. If you know the book, that's a tough job, but not impossible. There's some commentary about it by Penn and Bacon, but it's not enough.

The acting a very mixed bag - Eastwood has always tended to leave actors to their own devices, for better or worse.

Penn has some excellent scenes (his post-funeral scene on the porch with Tim Robbins is a beauty), but also some where he starts teetering into Al Pacino land (and not early good Pacino). Bacon is good, but his jaw is permanently clenched in one position. The scenes with him and his estranged wife on the phone could be cut - they add nothing and come off as clumsy.

Tim Robbins has two good scenes, but the rest of the time his acting is largely two-note and so mopey that his character comes off like a half-wit (which is not what he's supposed to be at all, based on the novel). He looks so miserable that there's nothing at stake for this character when the walls close in around him. He's marked as DOOMED and his unjust fate just seems inevitable rather than the moral outrage it should be.

Just as bad is Marcia Gay Harden who gives an annoying one-note lip-quivering, face-squinched performance throughout.

I did like Laurence Fishburne in a rather thankless role - he was the most relaxed onscreen of any of the stars (he has one good scene where he stand up to Penn). Some of the minor players (the murdered daughter's BF and his slatternly mother in particular) do fine work.

If you haven't read the book, the film is a reasonable if uneven entertainment, but it's not quite the tragedy it should be. The reviews so far have been excellent, which is surprising.

I think the critics are going all out for Eastwood as they think this will be his last real hurrah. And it's certainly better than his last 3-4 films, but that's largely due to the quality of the original material.

Looking at "Mystic" screenwriter Brian Helgeland's work post "L.A. Confidential" ("The Postman," "Conspiracy Theory," "Blood Work," "A Knight's Tale," "The Order"), I'm convinced that the excellent quality of "Confidential" is chiefly the result of the efforts of director and co-writer Curtis Hanson.

In fact, Hanson would have been a far better choice to direct "Mystic" than Eastwood (the mediocre "8 Mile" notwithstanding).

There's not a weak link in the cast of "Lawless Heart," a multi-character film with intertwining stories following the accidental drowning death and funeral of Stuart, a local gay restaurateur in a village on the Isle of Man. In fact, the performances are the highlight.

Stuart's brother-in-law Dan (Bill Nighy) and sister Judy (Ellie Haddington) deal with what to do with Stuart's inheritance, as no will was prepared: keep it or give it to Stuart's partner Nick (Tom Hollander). Dan, who is rather homophobic, also begins to question the limitations of the life he's chosen. Judy is torn between loyalty to Stuart's probable wishes and her family's own tight financial situation.

Stuart's cousin Tim (Douglas Henshall) is an immature, ethically dubious black sheep who returns after leaving town years ago. He winds up falling for Leah (Josephine Butler) a local shopkeeper, only to get treated the same way he tends to treat people.

Nick, numb with grief, first lets Tim stay with him but soon regrets it. During a wild party Tim throws, Nick meets Charlie (Sukie Smith) a lively, feckless, not-too-bright local girl and is drawn to her energy and high spirits. (SPOILER ALERT). However, this story is where the script goes off-base. The development of Nick and Charlie's relationship struck me as forced in order for the two to have a single rushed, emotionally intense sexual encounter late in the film.

While it's apparent that Nick's behavior is more an outlet for his grief than anything else, the whole sequence felt false. It's not as if Nick couldn't express himself in such a way with another man (which would make more sense). With this film, "Bedrooms & Hallways" and the TV mini-series "Bob and Rose," I'm sensing an odd British fascination with gay men who suddenly have sex with women. Go figure.

I wonder if the filmmakers would have a grieving widower find himself having sex with another man. Don't bet on it.

Denzel Washington's debut as a director starts off as a lively, if very familiar pairing of troubled seaman Fisher (Derek Luke in a fine performance) and a Navy psychiatrist (well-played by Washington) assigned to find out why his patient has a hair-trigger temper which leads him to violence.

As Fisher goes through the usual scenes of initial distrust until that first breakthrough, we begin to see the harsh reality of the man's childhood, one marked by abandonment and traumatic physical & sexual abuse at the hands of a foster family.

In the meantime, we're also provided with Fisher's first romance with a fellow female in the Navy, as well as a glimpse of Washington's troubled marriage.

Once it's clear that Fisher is on the way to recovery, the film loses it's narrative energy and starts to drag. The story is certainly engrossing in itself, but the presentation (i.e. the direction) is pretty by-the-book, which ultimately grows wearisome.

While Fisher's story is largely fact-based, the dramatic arc is no different than many other stories of the same nature, so it would have served Washington well if he had shaped the material differently so that it wouldn't seem so familiar - no matter how inspiring. Also, the romance between Fisher and the woman is charming, but pretty mild in its dramatic impact.

There is one powerful scene near the end where Fisher finally meets the birth mother who abandoned him. Viola Davis, an excellent actress who got a well-deserved Tony Award for her work in August Wilson's "King Hedley II," has few lines in this scene, but she doesn't need them. Her face and body language do more than words could.

Unfortunately, the effect of this scene is undercut by the next scene, an unbelievable ending in which Fisher is greeted by the entire extended family of his late birth father - somehow, his aunt managed to get the entire clan together in a matter of an hour or so and put together a breakfast feast. "Uplifting"? Yes, but far-fetched. Films don't need to work this hard to drive home the importance of family.

"Forgive and Forget" will certainly generate mixed feelings. The central character of David, a closeted working class guy who's desperately in love with his best pal Theo, is interesting in that David becomes the equivalent of a jealous lover when Theo gets increasingly serious about his new GF Hanna (who's not so different from David in some respects).

A jealous lover who has to conceal his feelings, which leads David to some actions that are less than sympathetic. While the film tries to show how David is suffering, the script and the lead actor rarely succeed is making David both wrong-headed but sympathetic. He glowers so much and is so clammed up emotionally that he almost becomes a villain. Theo really is the most sympathetic character in the film, a man victimized by his unreasonable GF and betrayed by his best friend.

(Spoiler alert): The penultimate scene on a TV show called "Forgive and Forget" is unbelievable to me. Even given David's need to tell Theo how he feels, it's hard to believe that someone as closeted as David would come out in such a public, spectacular way. The writer and director don't build David's character in a way where such a gesture seems inevitable. And the film never thinks to explore why the TV show would cooperate with such a surprise admission.

The ending has upset viewers - frankly, I didn't believe Theo to be the type to engage in such brutal behavior. And the Hanna's sudden appearance to stop Theo from inflicting further damage to David made no sense at all, given that she and Theo had already broken up.

Given David's actions it's easy to interpret the beating as David getting what he deserved for betraying his pal...and for daring to fall in love with a straight man and humiliate him by declaring that to him on TV. I can certainly imagine many hetero men readily taking that away from the film, especially as we see Theo and Hanna walking away hand-in-hand leaving David laying on the floor to fend for himself - not even asking if he's OK. As for the last shot of David, who can say what it means? He's learning how to move on? He's still in a dream world?

Anyone familiar with the gay-related murder that resulted from a similar occurrence on the Jenny Jones Show will wonder just what the filmmakers intended here. I understand that the writer of this film makes special mention that he's straight, so you never know.

Having read some good notices for "The Trip" (though not from reviewers here in NYC), I was still surprised at how good intentions can go awry from poor writing.

"The Trip" is basically a 3-act drama charting the relationship between two gay men from the early 70's to the mid-80's. Alan starts out as a closeted Republican who discovers his true nature pretty quickly, while Tommy is a liberal gay activist. The dichotomy of these two is a little too convenient, but we'll let that go.

The two appealing and talented leading actors are Larry Sullivan and Steve Braun . Braun has a major Brad Pitt thing going in the first part of the film, while Sullivan has the more demanding role (in scenes where Alan is upset, Sullivan's vocal inflections bear a very close and unfortunate resemblance to Hal Sparks' on "Queer as Folk"). There's also an amusing turn by Jill St. John as Alan's mother.

Major spoilers below:

But this film sinks under some unbelievable situations and vague character motivation. Before falling for Tommy, Alan was in the process of writing an anti-gay tome as a way of expressing his self-hatred - yet he doesn't really act like someone who has this problem. Despite his almost immediate attraction to Tommy, Alan signs a contract with a publisher for the book, but soon wishes he hadn't.

A few years later, the book gets published anonymously (due to Alan's protest) but Alan's identity as the author is revealed and when Tommy learns of it, you expect a strong confrontation. Instead their relationship ends on an inexplicable whimper that leaves plenty of questions unanswered. The reason for a break-up isn't really clear (Alan's explanation would certain pass muster with many people, initial embarrassment aside).

Immediately after the breakup, Alan winds up shaking up as a kept boy with a slimy closeted lawyer named Peter Baxter, but later Alan becomes a gay activist himself. For some reason, we're supposed to believe that with his new-found activism, Alan is still with the lawyer, and that Baxter would want to risk his "secret" by keeping company with a very public gay activist.

The rest of the acting is either wooden (Ray Baker as Baxter - his acting during a dinner party going bad wouldn't even qualify as phoned in) or just plain bad (Serena Irwin as a female friend; Art Hindle as Alan's father, and Alexis Arquette who is simply embarrassing as the queeny friend Michael).

Writer-director Miles Swain inserts documentary footage or gay-related events to mark the passing of time, but the relationship between these events and the lives of the two protagonists is nebulous.