The Maker

Josh is turning 18 and hanging out with a bad crowd. They do drugs, drive recklessly and even steal from the U. S. Mail. His brother Walter has been gone for a while and he comes back hoping to make amends for leaving the family. Josh has what seems like a brother-sister relationship with Bella, but he really wants Emily, a cop who is several years older.

Josh's parents died when he was very young, and he was adopted by the Minnells. Walter (who has gone back to his original name Schmeiss) knows the full story, which Josh has never heard, and what happened to them may explain why both brothers turned out the way they did.

'The Maker' is the one who makes the rules in a given situation. Josh has that opportunity when he helps Walter and Felice in their 'transfer and storage' business.

I think of the pleasant character from 'What the Deaf Man Heard' when I think of Matthew Modine. However, he can play bad guys too, and he made Walter likable and not really evil. As a con artist, Walter had to be quite a good actor too. I thought most of the lead actors gave good performances. Still, the movie was quite dark at times, and somewhat violent toward the end. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers effectively showed a young man having to make important moral decisions as he reached a point where he could have gone down the wrong road.

It was a worthwhile film, if you like this sort of thing.

Sleeper alert: A straight-to-video-cable flick that upon closer inspection is a very intriguing character study. Ignore the generic video box cover and the ubiquitous straight-to-vid Madsen: note the talented cast, (modine, parker, balk) and director (hunter, "river's edge) and allow yourself to give this movie a chance. A troubled but gifted teen confronts his 18th birthday with his troubled and lost friends, when a stranger (or is he?...) enters his life. Low-key, well played, with a bit of generic warehouse shoot-out footage probably a necessity to get funding...the filmmaker's make a real effort on a scant budget, and despite flaws, any accomplishment however small shouldn't be overlooked in this time of cookie-cutting filmmaking. See it!

There were so many good things here -- interesting characters, good details (like the Minnell's perfect home being right next to an ugly industrial complex), and the potential for a nice dramatic movie about troubled brothers reuniting. The filmmakers had lots of good ideas and no way to weave them together into a coherent movie. Modine was sadly unconvincing as a bad guy, Madsen was an unnecessary scenery-chewing addition, and how Balk's character was written off was a crime. The scenes between Bella and Josh were the best. Jonathan Rhys Meyers was excellent! (He does a good American accent.) He brought a very genuine, believable feel to the character Josh. It's a shame the movie let him down by becoming increasingly implausible, and finally just a low-budget action climax cliche. Good cast & good ideas make this worth seeing.

Quirky intelligent little tale of a boy choosing between his foster parents' dream of college and his older brother's exciting life of crime. A lot of fun funky little touches. Pacing is slow, but it's quite interesting.

I saw this movie solely because Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Fairuza Balk are in it, but it turned out to be worthwhile on its own merit. Of course, the performances by Rhys-Meyers and Balk do help. The crime story angle of it isn't terribly interesting. Whooo, lotsa shooting and squealing tires. (Yawn) The story of a teenager idling in life and waiting for it to happen to him rings true, though. Modine makes a sufficiently oily criminal trying to extend the "family business." The sequence where Josh finds out what happened to their parents is unnecessarily overblown, but it was bearable. Balk is, as usual, a hidden gem. Mary Louise Parker I didn't even recognize for a while, and her character seemed to be a plot device, but she did fairly well. I was floored watching Rhys-Meyers, thinking all the while "THIS is Brian Slade from 'Velvet Goldmine'??? Without the makeup and with his natural hair he looks at least five years younger, and it strikes you "heh, he's just a kid." One that can act, I've decided. His American accent is perfect, tinny and hollow and more authentic-sounding than those of some of the real Americans in the movie. I've rarely if ever heard a foreigner evoke so perfect an imitation of American speech. Anyway, this is a worthwhile movie. A little generic sometimes, but overall it's very decent. Ignore the misleading video box, but watch for the humorous parts, like when Rhys-Meyers gets pulled over by his dream girl in blue for running a stop sign.