(2000. dir: Davis Guggenheim) Three best friends in college (Lena Headey, James Marsden, Reedus) room together in one of those eccentric, enormous, always miraculously immaculate artists' lofts that only exist in movies. Derrick (Marsden) foots the bill; he's gorgeous, smart, and lives off a handsome trust-fund. Jones (Headey) is in love with him, but too smart to let it interfere with the good, strong friendship they've developed. Travis (Reedus) is the brilliant and doubt-riddled artist-in-nascence who plays Plato to their Jim and Judy. In response to the lessons of a maverick teacher (well-played by Eric Bogosian), they develop an experiment with gossip: start an unfounded but plausible rumor and trace its pathways and permutations. You guessed it: it berserks wildly out of control, damaging not only reputations, but destroying relationships and even threatening lives.
The acting is uniformly good, if you can overlook that some of the kids are a little long in the tooth, and the story moves along at a good pace, a little over-slickly, but engagingly enough, until it backs itself into a crazy cul-de-sac and can only find its way to a Hollywoodly-Acceptable, Grandly Climactico finale through some byzantine plot-acrobatics, culminating in a denouement that's too absurd to countenance. (There's an alternate ending, and it's a little better, but only a very little.) Still, it's a worthwhile ride until then. This may be my favorite role for Headey. It's wonderful, and sort of breathtaking, to watch her laugh and have fun. Much as I love the Sarah Connor Chronicles, and addicted as I am (believe me, against my will) to Game of Thrones, she's always so stern and tautly-drawn and iron-jawed and cynically grimacing in most of her casting that it's often difficult to relax in her presence.
Reedus is lovely in this; watch the deleted scenes, which enhance his role some. His Travis is equal parts sweet sad-sack and dark borderline, and young enough to fall either way. Obviously brilliant but socially inept, he's dependent on the friendship-triangle and has most to lose if it crumbles. He gets some good writing (asked if he's drunk, he says, "I'm having a dialogue with gravity,") and, even when he's not central to a scene, his importance is acknowledged, as when Jones and Derrick finally give way to their long-muzzled passion and start knocking things around in the kitchen. We spend as much time watching Travis' complex reaction as we do the tumbling about.
Rating: three stars until the end, when it falls below two
Reedus Factor: three and a half stars
No comments:
Post a Comment