Frailty
Network Premiere with Snacks
It takes the combined influence of a free copy and a friend's recommendation to make me sit through a Matthew McConaughey movie. Frailty was nominated in a few year-end lists so I thought hey, it can't be all bad. It wasn't all bad, but I can't say I was glad to see it. As Fenton Meeks, McConaughey drawls a deadpan tale, full of mystery-implying ommissions, to one Agent Doyle (Powers Boothe), who is equally unbelievable and deadpan. Then comes the flashback, wherein director Bill Paxton plays Meeks' dad and Matt O'Leary plays young Fenton. O'Leary was great, and I hope this role leads to future work for him.
Paxton's performance is how you would expect, packed with zealous earnestness and of course, some craziness. Within this flashback comes, well, it's technically another flashback, though the teller of the story was not present, so it is a - re-enactment? Then follows an increasingly nonsensical chain in events, with convenient happenings to make everything continue unabated, ending in a fake-feeling sort of twist ending. The twist might have been more effective of Meeks' adult story had one, a strong narrative structure, and/or two, a hint of a promising conclusion. Instead, he speaks in contrived riddles and forced doublespeak, and by the time Meeks is actually speaking with Agent Doyle, we already have enough information that it makes any extra data kind of anticlimactic. Picture this as an example: I know who killed that wolf, officer. He was killed by a woodsman, who rescued Red Riding Hood. So, one night, Red Riding Hood was walking through the woods" All tension destroyed. The fact that neither Boothe nor McConaughey are the strongest actors in the world does not help either.
OK, fine, you might be thinking, so the story, structure, and actors didn't do it for you. Surely these other critics liked something about it. What's it about? Basically, Fenton and his brother Adam were regular kids with a regular dad until dad had a vision (the aforementioned re-enactment) which told him basically to start killing people. Excuse me, destroying evil demons on earth. So dad embraces becoming God's lethal instrument, and jumps into his divinely appointed work, making his kids come along for the ride, with a zeal that can only be born of perfect conviction, or perfect lunacy. Fenton is dubious, and pays a price for his lack of faith. Adam, on the other hand
The film could have been taking advantage of a post-9/11 fear of religious zealotry gone horribly awry, but instead seems to want to make us wonder who is really in possession of The Truth. Is the Meeks family laboring under a genuine divine retribution plan or slaughtering innocent people at will? Who defines innocence? A "victim" who is innocent of having directly harmed the Meeks is killed by them, but may have harmed others. The movie seems to stand in favor of vigilante justice, regardless of whether its divinely doled or performed by mortals. Some good ideas went into the meat grinder, but what came out was largely uninteresting absurdist mush. However, I must give kudos for the film implying all kinds of very brutal violence yet barely showing a thing.
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These reviews (c) 2002 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. reviews@cinerina.com Check out previous reviews at: http://www.cinerina.com http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/listing.hsbr - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource http://www.mediamotions.com for 1999 releases
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