And this is what I like about this actor. I have yet to see him in a role where he isn't playing a profoundly disturbed person. Usually a victim of his own brand of craziness, desperation and poverty, this time he's not only victimized by himself, but by a whole crew of people that want to do him extreme harm.
This time the style is very Hitchcockian, very plottish and devious. Haden this time is clean shaven and so we are better able to see the off facial twitches and mannerisms that hair usually masks. There's a very strong cast here, and I remained kind of reluctantly glued to it like a bug on some sticky trap.
I found it the weakest of the Haden Canon of eccentric roles, but still unmistakably the signature style of an actor I like a lot. Emmet Walsh is among my favorite character actors but he doesn't do as much as I wish he would here, but then this role is confining and Liz Shue is Liz Shue, for better or worse. Haden is still a huge victim, this time it seems that the entire universe is conspiring against him, instead of just his own somewhat ambiguous past mistakes.
And that complicates matter for this thoroughbred of personal misery. He is at his disturbed best with simpler plots where he is so effective at portraying abandoned, broken hearted, impossibly lonely and isolated black holes of misery and trouble. That is all still here, but diffused by confusion. Usually he ends up with some sort of emotional resolution while remaining in hideous circumstances but this time there is so much going on that the resolution is very shaky and temporary because it's circumstantially based, not a result of some agonized internal struggle that results in a personal epiphany, his trademark.
All in all, if you your assessment of what he's cast for coincides with mine, then this is worth the time. We seem meant to take a lot of preposterous idiocy seriously, or is it that we are supposed to take comedically some very serious stuff. Clearly, BOTH. And so, again, the tone can be as confusing as the twisting plot, the Hitchcock "Who done It", I mean REALLY done it? Sort of thing that's goin' on.
Decide for yourself. Watchable, but with provisos.
This time the style is very Hitchcockian, very plottish and devious. Haden this time is clean shaven and so we are better able to see the off facial twitches and mannerisms that hair usually masks. There's a very strong cast here, and I remained kind of reluctantly glued to it like a bug on some sticky trap.
I found it the weakest of the Haden Canon of eccentric roles, but still unmistakably the signature style of an actor I like a lot. Emmet Walsh is among my favorite character actors but he doesn't do as much as I wish he would here, but then this role is confining and Liz Shue is Liz Shue, for better or worse. Haden is still a huge victim, this time it seems that the entire universe is conspiring against him, instead of just his own somewhat ambiguous past mistakes.
And that complicates matter for this thoroughbred of personal misery. He is at his disturbed best with simpler plots where he is so effective at portraying abandoned, broken hearted, impossibly lonely and isolated black holes of misery and trouble. That is all still here, but diffused by confusion. Usually he ends up with some sort of emotional resolution while remaining in hideous circumstances but this time there is so much going on that the resolution is very shaky and temporary because it's circumstantially based, not a result of some agonized internal struggle that results in a personal epiphany, his trademark.
All in all, if you your assessment of what he's cast for coincides with mine, then this is worth the time. We seem meant to take a lot of preposterous idiocy seriously, or is it that we are supposed to take comedically some very serious stuff. Clearly, BOTH. And so, again, the tone can be as confusing as the twisting plot, the Hitchcock "Who done It", I mean REALLY done it? Sort of thing that's goin' on.
Decide for yourself. Watchable, but with provisos.