What a strange and wonderful picture, a thrilling remake of Clouzot’s Wages of Fear, made with the documentary-like realism which embodied most of Friedkin’s films. At a cost of nearly $22m of 1977 dollars, Sorcerer exemplifies the hubris of those celebrated 70’s mavricks who at the beginning of the decade shook up the studio system with the New Hollywood movement then through a series of expensive flops saw the end of the progressive scene at the onset of the 1980’s. Sorcerer survives magnificently over time as one of Friedkin’s best films, now revered by cineastes around.
Showing posts with label William Friedkin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Friedkin. Show all posts
Friday, 18 March 2016
Tuesday, 13 September 2011
TIFF 2011 - Killer Joe
Killer Joe (2011) dir. William Friedkin
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Gina Gershon, Thomas Haden Church and Juno Temple
***½
By Greg Klymkiw
"I don't think I'll have to kill her. Just slap that pretty face into hamburger meat."
- Jim Thompson dialogue from Stanley Kubrick's The Killing
At one point during William Friedkin's Killer Joe, an unexpected roundhouse to the face renders its recipient’s visage to a pulpy, swollen, glistening, blood-caked skillet of corned beef hash. Said recipient is then forced at gunpoint to fellate a grease-drenched KFC drumstick and moan in ecstasy while family-members have little choice but to witness this horrendous act of violence and humiliation.
William Friedkin, it seems, has his mojo back.
He’s found it in the muse of Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts. The two collaborated in 2007 on the nerve-wracking film adaptation of Bug, a paranoia-laden thriller with Michael Shannon and Ashley Judd. Set mostly within the dank, smoky confines of a sleazy motel room, both dialogue and character was scrumptiously gothic. The narrative was full of unexpected beats, driving the action forward with so much mystery that we could never see what was coming. Alas, Letts lost command of his narrative in the final third, veering into predictability. In spite of this, Bug was still one of the most compelling and original works of its year.
Killer Joe is a total whack job of a movie, and delightfully so.
Set against the backdrop of Texas white trash, the picture opens with a torrential downpour that turns the mud-lot of a trailer park into the country-cousin of war-torn Beirut. Amidst tire tracks turning into small lakes, apocalyptic squalor and lightning flashes revealing a nasty barking mastiff, a scruffy Chris (Emile Hirsch), drenched from head to toe, bangs on the door of a trailer. When it creaks open, a muff-dive-view of the pubic thatch belonging to his ne'er do well Dad's girlfriend Sharla (Gina Gershon) leads Chris to the bleary-eyed Ansel (Thomas Haden Church).
Chris desperately needs to clear up a gambling debt and suggests they order a hit to knock off his Mom, Ansel’s ex-wife. She has a whopping life insurance policy and its sole recipient is Dottie (Juno Temple), the nubile, mentally unstable sister and daughter of Chris and Ansel respectively. Once they collect, Chris proposes they split the dough.
To secure the services of the charming Killer Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) they need to pay his fee upfront. Father and son propose Joe take a commission on the insurance money once it pays out. This is initially not an acceptable proposal until Joe catches sight of the comely Dottie. He agrees to take the job in exchange for a “retainer” – sexual ownership of Dottie.
Father and brother of said sexy teen agree to these terms, though Chris betrays some apprehension as he appears to bear an incestuous interest in his dear sister.
From here, we’re handed plenty of lascivious sexuality, double-crosses, triple-crosses and eventually, violence so horrendous, so sickening that even those with strong stomachs might need to reach for the Pepto Bismol.
Basically, we’re in Jim Thompson territory here. It’s nasty, sleazy and insanely, darkly hilarious.
This celluloid bucket of glorious untreated sewage is directed with Friedkin’s indelible command of the medium and shot with a terrible beauty by ace cinematographer Caleb Deschanel.
Friedkin, the legendary director of The French Connection, The Exorcist and Cruising, dives face first into the slop with the exuberance of a starving hog at the trough and his cast delivers the goods with all the relish needed to guarantee a heapin’ helpin’ of Southern inbred Gothic.
This, my friends, is the kind of movie they don’t make anymore.
Trust William Friedkin to bring us back so profoundly and entertainingly to those halcyon days.
Oh, and if you’ve ever desired to see a drumstick adorned with Colonel Sanders’ batter, fellated with Linda Lovelace gusto, allow me to reiterate that you’ll see it here.
It is, I believe, a first.
Killer Joe is being unveiled for North American audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2011).
Saturday, 16 April 2011
The Brink's Job
Starring: Peter Falk, Paul Sorvino, Gena Rowlands, Peter Boyle, Allen Garfield, Warren Oates
**
By Alan Bacchus
I guess there’s a reason I’ve never heard anyone talk about this movie, let alone see it. It seems to have been deliberately buried in the filmography of William Friedkin. His back-to-back hit films The French Connection and The Exorcist are legendary. Even his remake of Wages of Fear in 1977, Sorcerer, though not available on DVD or Blu-ray, is a cult hit film, revered by those who know and appreciate it. Hell, even Cruisin’ (1980), the controversial serial killer film set in the gay underworld of NYC, got a decent DVD re-release a couple of years ago.
The Brink’s Job fits right in between Sorcerer and Cruisin’. It’s a ‘caper comedy’ like The Sting or The Great Train Robbery, in which the job of crime is made fun by the dandy personalities of its lead characters, the nostalgic time period (in this case, the 50s) and the overall desire for audiences to see working class Joes ‘stick it to the man’. Unfortunately, The Brink’s Job is so light, fluffy and unmemorable, I now see why it’s only a blip on Friedkin’s radar.
Peter Falk plays Tony Pino, a career criminal in Boston, Mass., who is caught and sent to prison for burglary. When he gets out, his attempts to go straight don’t last too long, and soon his need to steal returns in full force when the sight of the large sums of money being loaded into a Brink’s truck throws him off the wagon.
His first job seems so easy – lifting some money bags from the back of a number of trucks with ease. When this job doesn't make it to the press, the idea pops into Tony’s head that the negative publicity of such a robbery would look bad for the bank's reputation. Thus, they scheme to steal even more money from the falsely impenetrable Brink’s bank. After staking out the joint, Tony and his hoodlum colleagues systematically break in and take ‘em for everything they’ve got. It’s only after the job that loose tongues and internal jealousies compound and threaten to implode the whole affair.
Though the film is based on a true story, once called “The Crime of the Century”, the normally tough writer Walon Green (Sorcerer, The Wild Bunch) turns in a script so slight and undramatic that there’s little, if any, stake for the audience or the characters in these crimes. The tone established is so light and fun, there’s almost no threat whatsoever to these characters. At every turn, the jobs Tony pulls have minimal suspense. It requires little effort for him to steal from the trucks, and his numerous break-ins to the Brink’s building are executed with such ease that all tension is nullified.
Unless you count Peter Falk’s goofy, lazy-eyed antics as funny, other than some silly slapstick from Allen Garfield, the film is a comedic dead zone.
The robbery in this film is the absence of Friedkin’s recognizable robust streetwise style. Though production values are handsome, there’s no edge or semblance of suspense. Hell, not even a chase scene of any kind.
Saturday, 23 October 2010
The Exorcist
Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Max Von Sydow, Jason Miller, Lee J. Cobb
****
By Alan Bacchus
The scariest movie of all time? Perhaps. But it’s the arguably the horror film (along with Psycho) that had the biggest cultural impact on cinema. If Rosemary’s Baby laid the foundation for this type of ‘Catholic-centric’ horror exploiting ingrained fears and guilt of the venerable old religion, The Exorcist gave us all a little bit of Catholic guilt whether we were religious or not.
My last viewing of the picture was the director's cut, years ago, when it got a small rerelease. At the time I had thought the film lost a bit of it's edge, the physical effects, specifically, rendering the scares more corny than chilling. But going back to the original theatrical edition on glorious Blu-Ray, it's a different experience. Though it was on the small screen and not the big screen you can still that get that feeling why it was such a phenomenon almost 40 years ago
It's a peculiarly structured film. Of course we all know the story, a single mother and her daughter struggling to understand, makes sense of, and ultimately cure the young Regan of a nasty case of demonic possession. It's a very careful build up to the celebrated shock value scenes in the second half. Wonderful moments such as a game of Quija board, or some curious noises rustling about in the attic, form a great foundation of tension. And William Friedkin's knack for creating documentary-like realism from salacious stories renders everything that much scarier. The story of the film's co-lead Father Karras has its own completely separate parallel story for over half the movie. Karras has his own problems, his mother who has just died has given him with a large empty hole in the heart and a decent helping of guilt for not being there at the end. The convergence of these two storylines with the confrontation of Regan in her bedroom makes for an intense and dramatic second half.
There's also the film's peculiar and oblique opening, a lengthy sequence in Iraq introducting Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) involved in an architectural dig for some kind of relic. Then the film cuts to Georgetown for the main action involving the lead characters. Other than Father Merrin and the reappearance of the beastly sculture after the death of Burke Dennings, there’s little if no direct narrative connection between the opening and Regan’s predicament. Yet the scene is so important in establishing the scope of the film, that either, something evil has been released unto the world from man’s archeological intervention or that the devil’s fingers can imprint itself on any part of the world, whether it’s the Middle East or a humble street corner in middle class America.
There’s almost no dialogue in the sequence, instead Friedkin’s use of enhanced sound effects, atmospheric ambiance creates a quiet creepy tension which warns and teases us with the shitstorm of horror we’ll eventually have to face. And so what a bold and risky stroke for Blatty/Friedkin to use this scene as tonal context (Friedkin would use this same type of narrative discordia in his 1977 film Sorceror). And once we’re in his grasp, Friedkin carefully plays out the events which lead up to the possession of Regan and the emotional torture of her poor mother.
Since The Exorcist, the themes, tone, and even plot structure has been repeated by a number of other fine horror films since. The Omen, in particular, which is also a masterpiece in its own right, seems like a near carbon copy of The Exorcist’s template, same with John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, a delicious merging of William Friedkin and George Romero. Even Poltergeist, which doesn’t have any overt religious references but could be argued as the New Testament/Evangelical version of The Exorcist.
Like most of the great horror films, cause and effect is left more obtuse and loose than obvious. The best of horror cannot be explained.What is the cause of Regan’s psychosis, or why has the devil targeted her, or perhaps even Chris? The film never really makes this clear. While in most films, characters who suffer tend to suffer for a reason, or that suffering becomes the catalyst for the character to change. In horror and in particualr The Exorcist, the horror is random, striking ordinary, humble, decent people, testing their internal strength and the bond of their family. And so, ultimately, The Exorcist is story of a single mother and her only daughter and the inexplicable connection by blood and soul which fights off the devil.
The Exorcist is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Video
Monday, 2 March 2009
THE FRENCH CONNECTION
The French Connection (1971) dir. William Friedkin
Starring: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey, Tony La Bianco
****
I’ve been going through the five seasons of “The Wire” lately, which is arguably the best police show ever made for television. The antecedent of “The Wire” and all other realist police procedurals is William Friedkin’s “The French Connection”. Thirty-eight years later it’s astonishingly fresh, relevant, timeless, and shows absolutely no wear or age - still the greatest cop flick ever made.
The film begins in Marseilles, France. We meet Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey), a shipping stevedore under surveillance by the French authorities. He lives a classy and luxurious lifestyle on the sea side. But he’s a drug smuggler and plotting a transfer of heroin into the U.S. with the help of a French television star who will move the goods hidden in his car.
Charnier’s opponent is Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman), the typical cinematic rogue cop - a tough as nails, blue-collar detective, always on the clock, a life of perpetual antagonism resulting in an emptiness devoid of family or friends. The film parachutes us into the middle of Doyle and his partner Buddy Russo's (Roy Scheider) undercover sting of street-level narcotics policing. While out for a drink Doyle and Russo decide to tail a new high roller to the drug pusher scene. Wiretapping and other street level surveillance reveal the connection between Doyle's drug peddlers and their legendary French sources of NYC heroin. As the cat and mouse games progress so does Doyle’s obsessiveness with catching Charnier.
Friedkin’s background in documentary and a unique style of street-wise naturalism is applied to a story which, in the hands of another director, could easily have been sanitized and made melodramatic. And what a risky and bold stroke of Friedkin’s to depart from years of familiarity in the cop genre. Friedkin creates pace in front of the camera and challenges himself to keep up. DOP Owen Roizman's dynamic camera is always moving. Whether its handheld, or panning around in the alleyways and tight spaces in the NYC bars, tracking behind Doyle and Russo as they walk, run, drive through the streets, the sounds and smells of the streets are palpable – run and gun cinema at it’s best.
In addition to a sweep of the major Oscar hardware, Gene Hackman won well-deserved Best Actor honours. Popeye Doyle is as complicated a character as ever written in the cop genre. Though we know little about Doyle’s background, and with little exposition, or dialogue, Doyle's complexities are expressed by Hackman's instinctive reactions. Friedkin nor Doyle have the time to stop and reflect on the past, his character is defined by action. In the famous chase, Friedkin’s camera angles on Hackman driving recklessly underneath the L-Train show him as a wide-eyed, near psychotic in his pursuit of his subject –a sharp contrast to say, Steve McQueen’s reserved heroic demeanor in his chase scene in “Bullitt”.
With very little dialogue Friedkin is very precise with his class metaphors. It’s never explicit but part of Doyle’s obsessiveness stems perhaps from his working class self-loathing, contrast against Charnier’s sophisticated facade. All of this is said with Fernando Rey’s sly wave to Doyle after the lengthy street and subway chase.
Hackman’s performance is unheroic. The final confrontation in the abandoned building is uncompromising and powerful and rounds off a downward arc of obsessiveness for Doyle. He shoots and kills his police chief, with little regard or remorse, and then runs off into the unknown with vulnerable abandon in pursuit of Charnier. It's a supreme anti-climax for an action picture, typical of the cynicism of 70's cinema, but which retains the integrity of the story.
“The French Connection” is now available in a well-transferred and produced Blu-Ray edition from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment complete with new documentaries hosted by Friedkin himself discussing how he made the film. It’s early, but possibly the Blu-Ray release of the year.
Friday, 21 November 2008
BOYS IN THE BAND
Boys in the Band (1970) dir. William Friedkin
Starring: Kenneth Nelson, Peter White, Leonard Frey, Cliff Gorman
***
“Boys in the Band” is one of the benchmarks of cinema. One of the first films to portray overtly gay characters intended for mainstream audiences. The film is also notable for being an early William Friedkin film – just before his phenomenal 1970’s successes “The French Connection” and “Exorcist”.
The new DVD release makes for good timing. Gus Van Sant’s terrific biopic “Milk”, on Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician to hold public office opens in limited release this week. As well, the controversial repeal of gay marriage in California has put the issue of gay rights back into the spotlight.
“Boys in the Band” isn’t about gay rights, but it was arguably the ‘coming out’ party for Hollywood into the regular public. Before 1970, gay characters were disguised as fashion designers, hairstylists, or deviant anti-social types (like the murderous ‘roommates’ in Hitchcock’s “Rope”). So it was natural coinciding with liberalization of Hollywood that gays could comfortably come out of the closet on screen.
The film, written by Mart Crowley based on his successful Broadway play, portrays the ups and downs of a night in the life of a group of gay men in New York. Michael (Kenneth Nelson) has assembled his coterie of close friends for a surprise birthday party for his pal Harold (Leonard Frey). But when Michael’s old college roommate (straight roommate that is), Alan, shows up it spurs conflict which will test the relationships with each other.
The film waxes and wanes between comedy and tragedy. It’s a telegraphed trajectory, often contrived to create and maintain conflict. At one point Michael’s friend Alan starts a physical fight with Michael’s most flamboyant and thus threatening friend Emory. Despite punches being thrown Alan, for some undiscernable reason, continues to hang out at the party.
Friedkin lays on the metaphors a little heavy too. At the height of the party it starts to rain, bringing everyone inside, which is when the film turns darker (cinema note: bad things happen when it rains on screen). Once the party goes inside, Michael, seemingly without reason, turns into devilish manipulator – forcing everyone into a complex game of telephone truth or dare.
Crowley via Michael’s character reveals the dark internal self-loathing many closeted homosexuals felt at the time. It’s on the nose, but Crowley and Friedkin needed to be very clear about the film and it message. After decades of closeted cinematic sexuality, subtly with these issues understandably takes a backseat.
Friedkin’s direction is sharp. He does his best to lift the material outside of its inherent ‘theatricalness’ – with some confident camerawork – sometimes handheld and documentarylike (as in “French Connection”) sometimes traditional locked off coverage. His assured direction makes the confined apartment seems less clausterphobic.
“Boys in the Band” seems surprisingly relevant today, the dialogue uses terms, like “the closet”, “ménage” which were probably new to audiences at the time, but are commonplace now. The variety of gay personas seems authentic and up to date – free of clichés, which would be assumed for such an early film. Watching the film as pure entertainment may disappoint, but as a cultural benchmark it's an important film. Enjoy.
"Boys in the Band" is available on DVD from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment
Sunday, 25 November 2007
BUG
Bug (2007) dir. William Friedkin
Starring: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr.
***1/2
Review by Greg Klymkiw
Without question, “Bug” is one of the most compelling, terrifying and compulsively watchable pictures to grace the screen in quite some time. Directed by William Friedkin, that venerable master of all that can be deliciously and artfully nasty-minded in cinema, it is a picture that some might even view as a bit of a comeback for the filmmaker who unleashed, among many others, “The Exorcist”, “The French Connection” and “Cruising”. I am, however, not all that fond of the notion of comebacks – especially as they relate to men of Friedkin’s talent and vision – as Norma Desmond said, “it’s the pictures that got smaller”, and certainly in the case of Friedkin, the motion picture industry and the marketplace itself has changed, and certainly not for the better.
“Bug” tells the seemingly simple tale of a lonely working class woman (Ashley Judd) who finds a glimmer of happiness with a mysterious handsome stranger (Michael Shannon), only to be drawn into his web of paranoia. By finding love, they also discover pain, and eventually true happiness proves to be as elusive and delusional as their respective and, finally, collective states of mind.
In the end, does this really sound that simple? To be frank, it isn’t. In fact, one almost wants to avoid lavishing too much (or even any) attention to the plot since, for most of the picture’s running time, “Bug” careens madly into very dangerous and surprising territory. So surprising, in fact, that one of the minor disappointments is that the script by Tracy Letts (from his play of the same name) veers into some not-so-surprising territory in the last third of the picture’s running time.
However, for the first two-thirds of the picture, one never really gets a handle on where it is going. And in an age of cookie-cutter story telling, being surprised with every turn is not only rare, but in the case of “Bug”, supremely engaging and, even during some especially stomach-turning moments, entertainment of the highest order.
Friedkin is responsible for so much of this. Based on a theatrical piece, the movie wisely does not betray its roots but enhances them in a wholly cinematic way. Since most of the picture involves two people (with a handful of occasional “interlopers”) in one motel room, this could have (in less capable hands) been a dull, dreary mess. Friedkin keeps us glued to the screen with a keen eye that makes every shot a pleasure to look at, but also resonating with dramatic intensity. Not that the style is intrusive or obvious – it is, in fact, a delicious bird’s eye view of two people spiraling into a pit of insanity presented with verve and honesty. This should come as no surprise to Friedkin followers. His early career as a documentary filmmaker in addition to his years of experience as a visual storyteller serves him very well. He has also adapted theatre to the big screen – most notably with the slightly dated, but still groundbreaking motion picture of Mart Crowley’s play “The Boys In The Band”. Friedkin is not one of those filmmakers who fall into the cliché of having to unnaturally “open up” a theatrical work and/or gussy it up with overly fussy visual details. Friedkin embraces the proscenium in a variety of inventive ways – preserving the claustrophobic intensity of the piece, but allowing it to still breathe as a work of cinema.
But perhaps Friedkin’s greatest gift as a storyteller is his audacity. When necessary, he will push the boundaries, up the ante and shove us headfirst into territory that most filmmakers who prefer to hide from or even worse, try to mute. Not Friedkin. He ‘rub our noses’ in the worlds of his various films and succeeds admirably. Can anyone forget how far Friedkin took us in “The Exorcist”? Developing compelling characters and charting their journeys with the precision of a master documentarian and slowly building to a series of crescendos in which he earned and flung all manner of visceral atrocities in our face. Friedkin ensured that “The Exorcist” would be a true classic with lasting value by never forgetting that movies are a rollercoaster ride and that one must build to the peaks and valleys of terror with skill and precision to make sure that the moments of viscera stay with us forever. In “Cruising”, Friedkin blended the tried and true ‘policier’ with a descent into a sexy, thrilling, Bosch-like world of gay S&M clubs. Some found this offensive and/or homophobic - too bad for them. They lose. It was supposed to be thrilling. And so it was. And in “The French Connection” who can ever forget the moments of utter terror behind the wheel of Gene Hackman’s speeding car as it tore through the grubby, crowded streets of New York in pursuit of a train? With “Bug”, Friedkin takes us on an equally compelling rollercoaster ride.
As thrilling and memorable as the ride is, there is a point in the story where one gets a nagging feeling that it could go in a certain and potentially ho-hum direction, but because the picture has been surprising you all along and because the ride has been so happily infused with style, you repress your doubts and believe it will go into more unpredictable directions. The ride continues and it is still thrilling, but the eventual outcome was what you predicted at that earlier juncture and this is a bit of a drag.
But no matter: there are so few movies around these days as provocative and stunningly directed as “Bug” that one can forgive a flaw that can sink most other pictures.
The performance Friedkin coaxes from a slightly de-glammed, but still delectably sexy Ashley Judd is a tour-de-force – ranging from shy submission to out and out over-the-top insanity. Michael Shannon has had plenty of time to perfect his performance as the paranoid war vet on the stage, but he seems as fresh as if he were doing it for the first time. And in a supporting role as Judd’s psychotically abusive ex, Harry Connick Jr. shocks and surprises with a performance that is as sexy as it is terrifying.
The recent DVD release of “Bug” will provide a great opportunity for audiences to acquaint themselves with this picture which was completely mishandled theatrically – marketed as a pure horror film and plunked into all the wrong venues. Alas, the supplementary features leave quite a bit to be desired. Friedkin makes a better picture than he does delivering feature-length commentaries. His disappointing drone spends far too much time telling us things we already can see and an equal amount of time telling us things we do not really need to know (story issues that are ultimately not as deep as Friedkin makes them out to be). It would have been so much more interesting to hear Friedkin walk us through his process in terms of shot set-up, decisions regarding coverage and other practical issues of his art. We get a smattering of them in the EPK-like doc accompanying the feature as well as the intro segment, and while welcome, they’re so skimpy as to be truly unsatisfying – especially since we expect to get more on the commentary track.
In any event, “Bug” is as must-see motion picture. Even if you end up hating it, you’ll probably admire it anyway for both audacity and relentless directorial virtuosity.
Saturday, 2 June 2007
BUG
Bug (2007) dir. William Friedkin
Starring: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, Harry Connick Jr.
**1/2
“Bug” is really frustrating, for two-thirds the film is unpredictable and genre-defying, but the other third is uninspired and extremely predictable. I suspect part of the reason is its mis-marketing as a “Saw-like” horror film, when in reality it’s a claustrophobic three-hander, more in common with an Edward Albee play than a traditional Lionsgate film. In fact, the film was based on a stage play by the screenwriter Tracey Letts, which ran Off-Off-Broadway in 2004.
It’s a hot and sweaty night in Oklahoma, trailer-trash Agnes White (Ashley Judd) is partying with her friend R.C. at a local bar. They come back to Agnes’ seedy motel to continue the evening, bringing home with them a mysterious friend, Peter Evans (Michael Shannon). Peter is quiet and shy, and keeps saying, “don’t worry, I’m not an axe murderer”. Despite the creepiness he has a geeky innocence to him that Agnes is attracted to. Peter, who doesn’t have a place to stay, sleeps on Agnes coach for the night.
Meanwhile, Agnes’ abusive ex-husband Jerry has just been released from prison and is expected home any day now. This fear of dread with Jerry is set up well and Friedkin layers the suspense thick with close-ups of air conditioners, beads of sweat on Agnes’ face and frequent startling telephone rings. There’s also a constant buzzing of crickets that makes even the quiet moments tense. The suspense is so thick we expect to be startled at any moment. But Friedkin is smart and we slowly learn this isn’t a cheap-thrills thriller.
Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.) does arrive and instantly causes trouble with Agnes and he is threatened by the presence of Peter. Agnes feels safer with Peter and vice versa. They bond over a discussion of Agnes’ past which earns trust in one another. As a result they engage in passionate sweaty sex.
Real trouble starts when Peter discovers what he thinks is an outbreak of aphid infestation in Agnes’ room. The bugs are small but are everywhere. Paranoia envelopes Peter and then Agnes and they both become embroiled in an obsessive desire to eradicate themselves of the harmful tiny insects. That’s all I need to say at this point because the less viewers know of the film the better.
As mentioned two-thirds of the film is just plain brilliant. I went in expecting a horror film but I was pleasured by three wonderful actors with strong dialogue playing complex characters. Harry Connick Jr. is a standout. His large presence commands the screen, and his screen introduction is as memorable as introductions get. But it’s Judd’s film. She’s not afraid to get dirty, and bare herself physically and emotionally. She’s both strong and highly vulnerable at the same time. Michael Shannon is also a revelation, a veteran character actor from action films (“Bad Boys II”) and war movies (“Tigerland”, “Pearl Harbour”); he is given a complex lead and delivers a fine performance.
But a third of the film fails and unfortunately takes the wind out of it. The relationship part of the story is cast aside once we find out exactly what is going on. And when this is revealed the film follows a very predictable path of exploitation. WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD…. the film had the potential to spin itself into a new direction in the third act, with the introduction of Dr. Sweet who has been looking for Peter around town. His dialogue scene is intense, but nothing comes of it, and instead Friedkin and Letts choose to cop out by killing him in a grizzly R-Rated death scene. The delusions of Agnes and Evans also get hammered home to the audience to the point of tedium and overkill. These scenes are over-the-top and don’t reflect the careful measured performances earlier in the film. And the biggest disappointment is the lack of resolution with Harry Connick Jr.’s character.
Therefore my feelings are mixed, but I must applaud the surprise comeback for Mr. Friedkin who made some of the finest films of the 70’s (“French Connection”, “The Exorcist”, “Sorcerer”) and then produced mostly ‘misses’ for the rest of his career. But at 71, its official, Billy Friedkin is back. Let’s start getting him the good scripts – no more Jades or Rules of Engagements.
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