Two Dramas from Home Vision

The Good Father (July 19/05)

In The Good Father, Anthony Hopkins stars as Bill Hooper - a bitter, motorcycle-riding single father who seemingly holds nothing but contempt for his ex-wife. Bill has been separated from Emmy (Harriet Walter) for quite some time, and is relegated to occasional visits with their young son. After meeting Roger (Jim Broadbent), a schoolteacher who's in the process of splitting from his wife, Bill decides to direct all of his anger and resentment into securing Roger sole custody of his son (his soon-to-be-ex has declared herself a lesbian and is planning to move the boy to Australia). Based on the novel by Peter Prince, The Good Father casts Hopkins as a surprisingly unlikable figure - Bill mistreats most everyone around him, including his little boy - and yet, thanks primarily to Hopkins' charismatic, engaging performance, the character eventually becomes someone that we're rooting for. It certainly doesn't help that many of the supporting characters have been painted with extremely broad strokes (with a few exceptions, including Broadbent's Roger), something that's particularly true of a man-hating lawyer that actually wears a t-shirt that reads, "all men are rapists." It's not exactly subtle stuff, and there's no denying that such elements hamper the overall effectiveness of the film. As a result, The Good Father comes off as uneven but mostly entertaining - although there's a revelation towards the end of the film that calls into question Bill's motives for helping Roger, without offering up an explanation (leaving the movie with a fairly sour aftertaste).

Featuring a brilliant performance from star Ulrich Thomsen, The Inheritance is nevertheless the sort of film that one admires more than enjoys. Thomsen stars as Christoffer, a successful restaurateur who is essentially forced to abandon his comfortable lifestyle and return home after his father commits suicide. After assuming control of the family business, Christoffer attempts to carry on with his day-to-day routine as if nothing's happened - though it's not long before he comes to the realization that this is impossible. Director Per Fly infuses The Inheritance with a jittery, fly-on-the-wall (no pun intended) sensibility that perfectly matches the relentlessly downbeat material, and effectively allows the filmmaker to elicit some unusually strong performances from his actors. But despite a surfeit of positive attributes, the movie simply never becomes as compelling as one imagines it's meant to be - something that's due primarily to the egregiously deliberate pace Fly's hard-wired into the proceedings. There's a fair amount of obviousness within the screenplay - ie we just know that things are going to keep getting worse for this guy - which makes it difficult to maintain a keen level of interest throughout the movie's overlong running time. Yet there's absolutely no denying the effectiveness of Thomsen's heartbreaking performance; he deftly transforms this increasingly weak man into a figure worth pitying, particularly as the film inches closer and closer to its inevitable conclusion.