“You do not speak to anybody except
the next of kin. Avoid physical contact – in case you feel like offering a hug
or something, don’t!”
If you’re a fan of movies where
real men manage to break the taboos about touching, without actually fucking, a
tough minded, tendered hearted new film, The Messenger, may be just the
ticket.
|
|
If Jeremy Renner’s job in The
Hurt Locker – defusing terrorist bombs under a mad dogs and Englishmen
brain destroying sun in Iraq – is the shittiest vocation not specifically
available on Craig’s List, then number two, with a bullet, has got to be the
job assigned Ben Foster’s Sgt. Will Montgomery. Just back from a second or
third combat tour, Will has been dumped by his girl, had an eye damaged and a
leg impaired and, as he sits alone in his room, finds his only viable option is
to re-enlist. That’s until he meets a sadder sack: Woody Harrelson’s Capt. Tony
Stone. Stone, who’s profanely nurturing a private sorrow, begins as Will’s boss
– at the Army’s Casualty Notification Office – but quickly morphs into drinking
buddy and bearer of tough advice: “Never touch the next of kin.” As Will and
Tony complete their rounds the hardest task is ducking when the newly bereaved
try to touch them – Tony smartly advises, “Be careful of the men, they can hurt
you.” And sure enough, an out of his mind with grief dead soldier’s father (a
playing against his inner wimp Steve Buscemi) practically mugs Will in a
parking lot. But then Will stumbles across a young widow (Samantha Morton),
struggling to raise a grade school aged kid, and suddenly all bets are off.
|
|
In town to talk up The
Messenger, Woody Harrelson agreed with me that perhaps the best example of
two people reaching out without physically touching involves a tour de force
moment in a small dark kitchen between Foster and Morton. Harrelson – who some
industry observers considered all wrong, too much of a pacifist to play the
embittered Captain Stone – compliments director, Oren Moverman, for creating a
brilliant scene by specifically defying his producer’s orders. “He didn’t want
scenes shot without cutaways (for editing) and (Oren) was already a little bit
in hot water, but he had his vision and he shot that nine minute scene, which was
actually a rehearsal – (Ben and Samantha) didn’t even think the cameras were
rolling on them – and that was the scene that he used. At the risk of getting
fired he just carried on with his vision.”
|
|
Following his TV primetime role as
the stud bartender in the CBS mega hit Cheers, Harrelson has put
together a remarkable, daring film resume – rocketing between the seemingly
un-filmable life of a girlie magazine king, The People vs. Larry Flynt,
to a washed up boxer savagely bashing his best buddy in the ring in Ron
Shelton’s Play It To the Bone, to last year’s (2008) mesmerizing
portrait of an openly gay ladies social escort in the sadly underappreciated The
Walker.
An actor’s actor who’s shrewd in
his estimation of other peoples’ work and often effusive in his praise,
Harrelson is tough on himself. Noting that he never felt he quite captured this
most elusive of characters – a man who’s no role model for young gays, a man
many mainstream gays might shun – Harrelson described the difficulty of working
on The Walker for writer/director Paul Schrader. “There was a lot
challenges in the shooting of that movie, I guess the hardest part was looking
at it afterwards and feeling that I sucked!”
|
|
Despite its heralded war theme, The
Messenger will probably be most remembered for its emotionally searing
payoff between the men – Harrelson hails his young co-star, “as a young Sean
Penn,” and Ben Foster certainly dazzles as a young man defusing the rage
within, the same rage that flowed so effortlessly as the revenge seeking meth
addict in Nick Cassavetes’ Alpha Dog, while providing a sneaky glimpse
at a gentler but severely conflicted soul, like Claire’s not gay boyfriend in
HBO’s Six Feet Under.
Oren Moverman acquired some of his
feel for the material during a brutal four year stint with the Israeli Army in Lebanon.
Moverman’s understated work (with co-writer Alessandro Camon) will remind fans
of honest war movies of Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail -- a movie
that gave us perhaps the rawest glimpse of a still young and skinny Jack
Nicholson, who was then years away from bloated self-parody.