Maybe “scrap the whole thing” is going a tad far. I am intrigued by movies like Padre Pio, where the underlying intent appears to be confronting viewers with a figure we can generously call “controversial*” by casting them in a role suited to their ugly foibles. I’ll now invoke my interview with S. Craig Zahler* about Dragged Across Concrete and his choice of lead casting as a supplementary example.
But intrigued or not, I’m never taken by these kinds of projects, if not because it’s very hard to like a movie where men like Shia LaBeouf are shoved to front and center, then because the movies themselves are very rarely any good, and very rarely have much to them apart from that confrontational quality. I like to be shocked and to have my mores tested. I don’t like empty provocation. That’s all Abel Ferrara has here.
You can read my full review over at Paste Magazine.
*To this day I take it as a token of pride that Zahler tried to turn the interview around on me by abruptly trying to pull focus from the subject of our conversation, being Mel Gibson, to his Black co-lead, Tory Kittles.
A Constant Visual Feast 