I don’t always like to start my reviews by describing the plot, but I don’t mind doing that here because the plot isn’t really what the movie is about. Billy Bob Thornton is the head of a squad of guards assigned execution duty at a prison. His father was also a correctional officer now retired and barely living with the aid of a portable oxygen tank. His son, played by Heath Ledger, has apparently just started working as a guard under his dad who is preparing him for his very first execution. His son cannot handle the stress and is unable to properly do the job. They have an emotional and physical fight afterwards, and his son soon commits suicide. Shortly afterwards, the wife of the prisoner loses her job, and then loses her son in a hit and run automobile accident. Thornton doesn’t witness the accident, but sees the result, and pulls over to help. He even ends up reluctantly taking the woman home from the hospital. Soon they form a delicate relationship, with each not knowing their previous connection. All they know is that they each just lost their only child.

What I’ve just described isn’t really what the film is about. It is about racism, loss, beliefs passed down through generations, emotional need, and progressing forward. The movie is also very minimalistic in what it spells out for us, so a lot has to be implied.

I think for that reason, and the fact that it is such a harsh film, will make a lot of people not like it.
This movie really doesn’t pull many punches and likes to shock us with sudden tragedies. We know someone is being electrocuted, and watching him die for what is certainly over a minute is probably the least disturbing death scene in the film. A suicide is graphic, and so shocking that we are stunned. Then we see the cold emotionless response to it later, and it hurts us even more. The death of a child from a hit and run isn’t shown in any sort of graphic way, but the emotional turmoil of the mother who isn’t even allowed to see and hold her son in his dying moments tears at us more.


The star of this film is an actor who constantly impresses me, Billy Bob Thornton. In a recent radio interview, he mentioned how he really hasn’t been acting in a movie in almost 2½ years (since “Pushing Tin”) and is now in five movies coming out in about 6 months. After seeing him in “The Man Who Wasn’t There” and this film, clearly he is not trying to do another easy “Armageddon” big blockbuster type of role. Speaking of the earlier film, In some ways he is as unemotional here as he was in “The Man Who Wasn’t There”. In that movie we got a lot of inner dialogue that let us know what was going on. We get none of that here.

Halle Berry is good in this film. Very good. She is certainly better than she has shown before, or that I thought she had in her. I’ve never understood the fascination with her since she first got some attention back in “The Flintstones”. With her last movie Swordfish so much was made of her high salary for exposing her breasts. Here, her breasts are shown so much that it isn’t any big deal at all by the end of the film. She has many scenes where she is realizing or thinking about something that we aren’t privy to. She isn’t as good as Thornton at showing this, but I intend to keep my eye on her in future roles.

Peter Boyle gives a very harsh performance as the drunken, bigoted grandfather. As soon as he sees two young black boys coming onto his property to say hello to his grandson he starts a rant at his son about the coloreds not knowing their place anymore like they used to in his day. He despises 'nggers' but admits to ‘spreading the coconut’ because he has a taste for it. This is not a nice man, and you can tell that the children have been raised with the same level of racism. Yet, we see Thornton care for a black inmate about to be executed, and the grandson has black friends, so there is hope that with each generation the level of hate is lessened.

Boyle also doesn’t seem to have any strong feelings for women as people. He tells his son that his wife failed him because she didn't sexually please him enough. He felt she ‘quit’ on him. He thinks his son ‘quit’ on him because he quit his job. Later he says he felt his grandson was weak, and that is why he ‘quit’ (committed suicide). He was a prison guard, and felt that his son, and their sons should be as well. Just like they should continue their racist beliefs. Not that it isn’t a decent job, but who really respects a career of being a correctional officer to that degree anyway? My guess is that he enjoyed killing black people, which would be the logical assumption about who is usually executed in a poor southern state.

I keep reading how these actors had to fight for their roles. I think they should be complimented not for winning the roles, but just for even wanting to get them. The pay was minimal, and the odds of a wide release weren’t good. And these aren’t necessarily positive images that actors wanting to be successful usually take.


I am impressed with how quickly we understand these characters. We see some deep past with barely any words spoken. Billy Bob Thornton is an abused son who abuses his own son. All three live in the same house, and in the backyard are the three graves and headstones of the two women they each married. We learn that both these women committed suicide, and it doesn’t take us too long to see why.

In a very early scene, Heath Ledger (the youngest son) has sex with a prostitute. She comes into the hotel room, he gives her the money, she quickly undresses, bends over the table, and the deed is done in less than a minute. This is as unemotional a sex scene as I’ve seen in years. Afterwards he wants to know if she wants something to eat or to talk for a bit, both of which she declines. This is the most thoughtful thing said to a woman by anyone from this family for most of the film. Later we see his dad try to use the same hooker. She knows him too, and knows the routine. This is not a family that uses women to satisfy emotional needs, just physical ones.

We don’t see the grandfather use the hooker, but from the way he talks about women shows that he had little love or respect for any women, much less his wife.


These three males have lived in the same house for decades, yet I doubt they ever have really loved or cared for one another. As a matter of fact in two scenes of dialogue they practically admit this. The scene when a son has a gun pointed at his father and asks “Do you hate me?”, and the father says “Yes, I always hated you.”. I believed him, and I wonder how much he hated himself after that. Some of the family is buried in their backyard, not fifty feet from the house, but I doubt they visit the graves often, if at all.

Later in the film when Thornton drops his father off in a nursing home and is asked “You must really love your father”, and he says, “No, but he is my father”. Again, honest, shocking and depressing all at the same time. And when his father sits in what must certainly look like hell to him with black people sharing his room and acting as his nurses, he tells his son “I don’t want to go like this”, and all Thornton says in response to him is “I don’t want to either”.


The camerawork here is very unusual. At first it seems like it is directed very poorly. The camera never seems focused on the right thing. The characters are always off center, and commonly foreground items are in the way. This must have been an artistic decision, because the few times someone’s face is centered, it really grabs our attention.

The film is the first (somewhat) major film by Marc Forster. He was born in Switzerland, and the fact that he isn’t an American citizen allows him to focus on things that we are too familiar with. He said in an interview that “the film has less to do with the death of a child, and more to do with racism; the differences between generations; what it means to be a man; breaking the circle of violence; the whole death penalty issue. All strong issues that I confront myself and have my own opinions about, obviously. It was very important to me to explore them since I live here now and the people who grew up here have been much more ingrained.”

He also discusses how people in general have a fear of death. How he feels that people don’t want to be around people who recently lost someone, and are always wondering if it is appropriate to invite them to ‘festive’ occasions. In one year he lost a brother to suicide, and both his father and grandmother died. His understanding of this comes through in the film.


The film has some unbelievably well done scenes, where the dialogue and actions are just right. There is a scene when Thornton’s neighbor is waiting at the end of his driveway to confront him after he chased off his children by firing a shotgun into the air. The way the neighbor politely threatens Thornton feels absolutely real, and more tense than a more traditional dramatic standoff would ever be. He explains that the kids were invited on the property, weren’t trespassing, and if he wants to ever have a further talk about it, he lives right over there. Thornton, wearing his guard’s uniform and gun, states that he should just keep them off of his property. It is a tense scene, and wonderfully played in the knowledge that as angry as they are, they are going to have to remain neighbors, and that each doesn’t want this to escalate any further than it has to.

Another excellent scene is when Berry first waitresses for Thornton. She spills his coffee and there is something in the way that he just asks for napkins that impressed me. He doesn’t want her help; he just wants her to leave. As soon as he finishes his meal he jumps up to pay, and doesn’t want to wait for her to come and ask how his meal was, etc.. His frustration with her lack of knowledge on the cash register is evident, and he just gives her four dollars leaving her with an $.08 tip. No nasty words need be said. He made it clear that he was unhappy with her, and not having his regular (white) waitress help him.


I’m still not 100% sure of what the film was about. Is it a study of hate? Of racial hatred? Of gender hatred? Or is it a message of learning to stop believing what you’ve been told versus what you feel? Or maybe it is one of accepting loss? I think it is a little of all these things, but I don’t think any are the only focus. In the end I’m left with a vague feeling that I still don’t understand these characters. This is a very unsatisfying feeling to me, because we do get to see a lot of depth. Just not the answers.

I’ve heard criticisms of the film stating that the character’s transitions are too abrupt, and I have to agree. However, Ebert states in his review that Thornton’s character doesn’t overcome his attitudes, but instead “shed’s his past like a snake sheds his skin”. This may be true, and I do remember a symbolic gesture of him burning his uniform. Ebert feels he doesn’t overcome racism so much as sidestep it in order to make way for his more pressing feelings. This I can agree with.

In the end, I give to you the answer to what the film was all about from the director himself. He states that the film is about forgiveness. “The last shot when they're on the porch and she looks over to the graves, she understands that so much death has already happened. Confronting him (Billy Bob) that she knows he was the executioner of her husband will not change anything. The only way to move on and overcome is to forgive.”



Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age