Melanie Lynskey Elijah Wood Devon Graye Christine Woods Robert Longstreet
A young nursing assistant in an existential
crisis seems to attract trouble at every turn—a foul-mouthed ungrateful terminal
patient, dog poop on her lawn, disrespectful clerks and customers in stores,
and finally, her house being robbed.
She reports the crime to the police, but gets little response. She tries to figure out what is
happening. Is everyone the scum of the earth? She seems to think so, and as time goes on, she gets so
hopeless, she wonders whether living is worthwhile.
Ruth’s (Lynskey) personality doesn’t help her;
she vacillates between pronounced meekness and using poor judgment in
problem-solving her way through hostile encounters. This happens with her
neighbor Tony (Wood), who thoughtlessly lets his dog poop on her lawn. An example of how inflexible she is
occurs when, after she confronts him and he apologizes, she doesn’t seem to
know what to do. Granted, some of
his responses are bizarre. At any
rate, the beginnings of a friendship are formed, and he offers to help her
recover her stolen belongings.
Comedic sequences are sprinkled throughout the
film, Ruth’s and Tony’s meeting being one. They make an entertaining pair—the best part of the film—in
their eccentric ways of communicating with each other, mixed with a kind of
admirable loyalty. They are two
misfits in society joining together to fight the evil in the world, despite the
police detective’s explicitly warning Ruth against a vigilante approach. She ignores him, and soon the two find
themselves mixed up in a major crime operation.
My practical nature often prevents me from
enjoying horror and crime films when the characters are shown to do stupid
things. An example here is Ruth
picking up a knife from the kitchen to investigate when she hears an intruder
in her home—which is almost a trademark in horror movies in general. Why didn’t she just pick up the phone
and dial 911? Further, when she
locates the silver stolen from her, she could just walk out of the consignment
shop with it concealed, but in typical “horror” mode, she walks right by the
shopkeeper with the silver in plain sight. This is a trumped up way of extending the drama, because when
the shopkeeper runs after her and she swings the box around, hitting him in the
face, her nurse persona kicks in, and she stops to inquire about whether he is
all right, fatefully delaying her get-away.
The two characters make a motley pair. She knows something about nursing, but
is unable to give a coherent account of her situation to anyone who might be in
a position to help. Tony is an odd
man who is small, but compensates for it by weightlifting to build up his
strength. Although he is mild-mannered,
Tony is adept at using martial arts tools like morning stars and nunchucks, and
does not hesitate to use them.
Both characters show they have compassion (she to a fault) and have a
moral set of values.
Elijah Wood makes Tony a full dimensional
character who is complex and with admirable qualities. Melanie Lynskey is harder to watch
because Ruth is characterized as inconsistent and frustrating in the way she
solves problems and ignores good advice.
But this is more a weakness in writing the character (too many
inconsistencies in her personality) than a function of her acting skill, which
is pretty solid. The script as a
whole by Director Macon Blair is uneven in its purpose and tone, and goes for
unbelievable complexity at the end.
The film did win the Grand Jury Prize for the
dramatic competition at Sundance, however; so clearly others valued this film
more than I did.
Vigilantism in the hands of a
world-weary woman and her gung-ho friend.
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