Frailty Review
By Joe Lozito
Paternal Darkness
Bill Paxton is an interesting actor. Before graduating to Leading Man roles, he specialized in those characters that typically got killed off in the first half-hour of the film (see "Terminator" and "Next of Kin" for prime examples). Recently, Mr. Paxton has played up his smooth, Everyman qualities with films like "A Simple Plan" and "Titanic". With his directorial debut, "Frailty", Mr. Paxton pushes that credibility to the limit by playing a single father who, after receiving a vision from God, trains his two young sons in the art of demon-killing. This isn't the type of slaying you'd see in an episode of "Buffy". This is straight-on, take-an-axe and, as his character says at one point, "go for the neck first, just like I showed you".
On paper (and to some extent, on the screen too) this might seem like a ludicrous premise. The movie will succeed or fail on the actor's ability to pull off moments of melodrama that have been parodied into the ground in this age of the self-deprecating horror genre. By and large, Mr. Paxton and his cast acquit themselves well. The young actors who play Mr. Paxton's children convey an adequate sense of confusion, curiosity and fraternal devotion. Matthew McConaughey, playing one of the grown sons, and Powers Boothe, as the FBI agent to whom he confesses, revel in that kind of deadpan delivery that made David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson stars. Mr. Paxton himself, however, is given the unenviable role of "Dad". He is forced to play the entire film in a constant state of awe over the mission that God has chosen for him and his family. In a way, however, Mr. Paxton succeeds even though the script lets him down.
First-time writer Brent Hanley knows the trappings of this genre, but doesn't explore it fully. The killings are neat and tidy and surprisingly easy to pull off, and the script gives away an awful lot in the name of foreshadowing. The main conflict in the story revolves around Dad convincing one of the sons to have "faith". The plot, while horrifying in one way, is fairly repetitive in another as Dad punishes the son by having him dig a huge hole in the yard. The hole, of course, will come into play later, though maybe not the way you think.
It is also worth mentioning that there is an uncomfortable parallel to be drawn between the characters in the film and the perpetrators of 9/11. Dad sees the people he is "destroying" as demons because God said they were. He doesn't see them as human. When he finishes his work, he can still say "I have never killed a person in my life". While the film, by no means, glorifies killing or terrorism, it does want us to understand how someone can think that way. However, the Dad in the film believes his vision is from God and never questions it. We don't see him as a religious man before the vision, so we don't know where he's coming from or why he buys into it so fully. Although, it might be better that that question remain unanswered.
