Crossing Guard

I guess I've been on a bit of a Jack Nicholson trip lately. I suddenly realised every movie I had seen him in I liked. On that basis, this little flick caught my eye in last week's teleguide.

But Jack can't save it. This movie is weak. The message is important, but Penn uses so many devices around such thin material that the whole thing seems artifically manufactured to generate a moral response. I always hate movies that try to tell you what to think, and this movie is a railway track for the mind.

The characters are wrong. They react wrongly. And the ending is the height of wrongness. I can't believe I kept watching for that- it lost me after half-an-hour.

This film should have been good. It has a potentially great plot, and the first few scenes are very good. Then, it simply falls apart, and the main plot is basically ignored for much of the remainder of the movie. I also found the ending to be somewhat disappointing, although it was nice to see the focus back on the central storyline. The acting was certainly good, as you would expect in a Jack Nicholson movie, but the real tragedy is that David Morse was absolutely wasted. He was outstanding, but he rarely had anything to work with. What a disappointment.

It has been five years since Freddie and Mary's young daughter was killed by a drunk driver and they have both been dealing with it in their own ways. Mary has moved on with a new husband and her other children, while Freddie has collapsed in on himself with a glut of drinks and strippers. However now that the killer, John Booth, has been released Freddie has focus and aims to kill him in revenge. However nothing is that simple.

Sean Penn, Jack Nicholson and David Morse are pretty much going to be worth a look as they are all pretty intense actors when given the material to work with. In this film Penn is the writer and director and, unfortunately, he is not as good as writing as he is the other facets of his job. Here the film is pretty good but has one massive problem that it cannot get over - the script. The film is based on clichés that you will have seen before. This itself is not a problem as, although the characters are familiar, it's what you do with them that counts - not their basic descriptions.

However the film doesn't actually do much with these basic characters and, what it does, is confused and clichéd as much as the basics are! The `message' of the film will be different for everyone so I won't go into that but suffice to say that the characters are never really explained and it is impossible to really feel for any of them. They drift aimlessly for an hour or so just `feeling' in a story that borders on the dull, before something happens that has any meaning - and even then you could see it coming. The script wants to be deep and meaningful, and it appears to have fooled several people on this site, but really it is hollow and really lacking in anything close to engagement.

It is even more tragic when you see the potential that the film had. As director, Penn does pretty well with good atmosphere and style. Likewise the cast could have been great but are mostly left to aimlessly drift with a script they can't work with. You can tell Penn is an actor by the way he seems to have been content to let the actor's `explore the space' or, in my terms, do what they want. Morse is a good actor but here he is lumbered with a man who has done all his suffering off camera resulting in him being a bland character with nothing left to explore in front of us. Huston is given nothing of value to do and the inclusion of Robin Wright Penn can surely be nothing but nepotism.

Overall there is a good film in here somewhere, but this is not it. The big names gather around a script that eventually lets them down by being far too dull and simplistic (and confused at the same time!) and never really engages.

Wonderfully talented actors, and a director I imagine talented as well. But both the actor's indulgence and the director indulging them is stultifying. Seemingly left to their own devices they create scenes with few sparks and much tedium. Nicholson, Morse, Huston and the other have ability to burn, yet they fizzle with false restraint.The actors are obviously improvising in many scenes yet their behavior often seems contrived and illogical. The director, attempts to create a reality of life with ancillary actors surrounding the leading characters,yet those scenes within scenes seem forced and intrusive. One should care about the three major characters caught up in a truly tragic event, yet it's generally "ho-hum" because they are caught "acting" in most every scene. With such great talents, this film was truly disappointing.

A powerful and compelling story, filmed well and with some great performances.

Sean Penn seems to have managed to level the actors here, with David Morse, Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson putting in great performances and none of them stealing the scenes from the other. I found this very surprising as I expected Nicholson to flood the screen, as he so often does with such little difficulty.

However, the emotion between Huston and Nicholson in the latter half of the film during the coffee shop scene is so powerful to watch. Huston is such a wonderful actress, and Nicholson shows some emotional depth that I haven't seen before, or rather, not felt with his performance before.

The story is written and planned extremely well, with tension rising slowly and almost imperceptibly, until the final day. I found myself caught from the opening scenes of the counselling session cut with the drunken, partying Nicholson, right through to the pivotal moments of the main characters lives.

It is a fantastic way to address this subject. To examine it from both sides, and keep each side with its own sympathies and understandings. Cleverly your sympathies and hatred are swapped throughout the story.

I hope there's more to come like this.