The Crossing Guard is immediately recognizable as a Sean Penn movie; Bruce Springsteen on the soundtrack, grimey streets, no-nonsense cinematography. And it has a lot of themes typical for a Sean Penn movie, too. Troubled males, remorse, redemption. John has served time in prison for having run over a girl, Emily, while drunk-driving his car. He is released and the father of the child, a man torn to pieces by grief, tries to kill him but there are no bullets in his gun. The story revolves around John and Freddy, the father, building up tension before their final rendezvous. Luckily, The Crossing Guard does not focus entirely on revenge, there are too many movies out there that do. It's more a film about people locked within grief. This is not a terrible film but not a particularly original one either. Jack Nicholson's debauchery, his grinning face, his tortured demenour, isn't that convincing. We get it, Freddy is depressed. Freddy drinks. Freddy hangs out in strip joints. But Freddy remains a caricature of what grief is. One of the most embarrassing (for Mr Penn) moments in the film is when Freddy brings home a girl from one of the joints and she plays him a song on her cheap synthesizer. Stripper with a heart of gold! C'mon! Penn should cut down on his use of clichés. Indian Runner is a much better achievement than this is, even though these films have lots in common.
(By chance, Anjelica Huston acts in both of the films I watched tonight. She is good in both.)
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