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Frailty
2001 - R - 100 Mins.
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| Director: Bill Paxton | | Producer: David Blocker | | Written By: Brent Hanley | | Starring: Bill Paxton, Matthew McConaughey, Powers Boothe, Matt O'Leary, Jeremy Sumpter |
| Review by: Jennie Kermode |
| Official Site: none active |
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Ya see boys, Gawd wants us to kill deeeemons
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A police detective at the end of his tether, trying in vain to solve a serial killer case, is approached by a stranger who claims to know who the killer might be. Suspicious at first, the detective is gradually drawn into the man's rambling story which starts in his childhood and ends very much in the present.
One of those self important little Hollywoodesque projects which confuses darkness of story with darkness of screen until one can no longer be sure what's going on with either, "Frailty" no doubt thinks itself very clever; one can indeed see the bones here of a much more powerful story than the one which actually emerges. A classic gothic tale about a man who apparently goes mad and starts killing people in God's name because he thinks they're demons, developing to encompass the effect which this has on his sons, it's one of those pieces which relies on the horror of predictability; but in this case that predictability is extended to the point where the plot's vital twists are transparent from the start. The only real mystery hinges on underdeveloped subplots where scenes would appear to have been hacked away by uncomprehending editors.
This is not to say that there is nothing worth watching here. The two young boys, Matt O'Leary and Jeremy Sumpter, give impressive, solid performances. Perhaps they have less difficulty finding faith in the script than do their adult counterparts. The easiest way to identify the director (since he's clearly learned nothing from the capable folk with whom he's worked in the past) is to observe that, in this case, his character suffers and dies far less horribly than is the case in most of his movies. Meanwhile, the ubiquitous Matthew McConnaughey turns in a performance so centered and dry that it's hard to feel any sympathy for him at all, a crucial mistake. In this way, the story becomes far too one sided. Moral judgements are handed out willy-nilly, but no-one ever examines the vital question "what if the 'madman' is right, and these really are terrible people? Does that justify what he does?" Thus, the story tries to invoke the philosophical without having the nerve to go all the way.
In the absence of any deep ideas or satisfying dialogue, "Frailty" relies on its twists, but, aside from their obviousness, there are simply so *many* of these that they become profoundly irritating, distracting from what story there is. Stronger adult characters might still have pulled this together, but it's hard to see how a child who went through so much grew up into such a tedious adult. All that remains is the shock value of religiously motivated murder.
The sorry state of this film is all the more unfortunate given that it contains so much fascinating potential. It's a run-of-the-mill, overblown horror movie with a genuinely scary film buried somewhere deep inside, scrabbling to get out. Decent editing at the script and production stages could have made it into something much tighter. Instead all we get is a lot of shouting and flouncing about.
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