Talented actors are let down by a formulaic script
Catherine Hardwicke’s latest movie stars Brian Cox as Max, a former mob enforcer who is given an early reprieve from his prison sentence when he is diagnosed with cancer and given only a few months left to live.
His only family is his daughter Maxine (Kate Beckinsale) and her young son Ezra (Christian Convery) but she doesn’t want anything to do with her dad and the boy has been led to believe his grandfather is dead. But despite Maxine’s reluctance to let her father back into her life, she does so, mainly because she is struggling financially and needs his help to pay her mortgage.
What follows next is a typical tale of redemption in which Max wins back favour with his daughter and she realizes how much she needs him in her life. Ezra benefits from having his grandfather around too but for the first half of the film, he thinks Max is a forgotten uncle that his mother had neglected to speak to him about.
The story is a familiar one but thankfully, the acting talents of the cast do much to hold our attention. Cox and Beckinsale are as dependable as always but it’s young Convery who really stands out due to his quietly moving performance as the sensitive Ezra who is bullied at school and sometimes debilitated by his epilepsy. He manages to hold his own against his older co-stars and on evidence of this film, has the potential to take on juicier roles that really let his acting talents shine.
The supporting cast, which includes Ernie Hudson as an old friend of Max’s, and Tyson Ritter as Ezra’s drug-addict father, also deliver great performances, which will be of no surprise to anybody familiar with their former work.
But while the actors are all very good, the film itself isn’t. It’s not the familiarity of the story that is the biggest problem, but rather the thin characterizations, rushed plot points, and lines of dialogue that rarely come across as authentic. These are all major flaws and as such, we are never able to become invested in the lives of the characters. As a consequence of this, the film isn’t as emotionally impactful as it should have been, so when it ends, you’re likely to be unmoved by what you have just seen on screen.
This isn’t to say the film is devoid of powerful moments. The awestruck look on Maxine’s face when she finally gets offered a decent job might just pierce your heart. And a scene involving Ezra having a seizure after watching his estranged parents get into a violent argument is likely to tug at your heartstrings because of Convery’s acting and the sad plight of his character.
Unfortunately, the rest of the film is flat and predictable and more like a cheaply-made TV movie than a Hollywood production. Catherine Hardwicke, who previously directed the coming-of-age drama Thirteen and the reasonably compelling skateboard flick Lords Of Dogtown, is a talented director (we’ll excuse the fact that she also made the tepid Twilight movies), but she doesn’t deliver her best work here. This might be down to the clunky screenplay by Mark Bacci which doesn’t give her a lot to work with.
The problems with the script are many. The father and daughter are quick to reconcile, for example, even though we are told she is deeply hurt by his past actions. There are very few scenes of them bonding after their forced separation so it’s hard to understand why she begins to warm to him again after he re-enters her life.
Then there’s the relationship between Max and Ezra. The two are quick to get along, even though Ezra knows nothing about the guy. There is one touching moment when the boy asks his grandfather about his criminal past but this ultimately amounts to nothing when the scene abruptly ends with no time for a proper discussion about moral values and Max’s regret for his actions.
The moment when Ezra discovers the real identity of Max is also badly handled, as he matter-of-factly accepts he’s his grandfather instead of taking to task his mother for lying to him. Admittedly, this might have something to do with Ezra’s character – he’s a sweet kid who doesn’t like confrontation – but more could have been done to add extra dramatic oomph to the scene.
If you lower your expectations, you might enjoy the film, provided you aren’t put off by its over-familiarity. But you do deserve more, as do the actors who do their best with the thin material they have been given. This could have been a powerful film about redemption and forgiveness but instead, it’s a badly written drama that veers from one sequence to the next without giving proper consideration to the themes it is trying to represent.
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Verdict - 5.5/10
5.5/10