Taking the Fun Out Of Dysfunctional

Rex Reed — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:44:21 -0400

If you haven't reached the end of your attention span for dysfunctional families, here comes another one in Richard Levine's Every Day. Liev Schreiber is absolutely perfect as Ned, a well-paid TV scriptwriter who appears to have it all--colorful job, perfect home, loving wife and two mature, intelligent sons with promising futures. But beneath the surface, Ned is in crisis, and festering scabs are ready to erupt; after 19 years of career and marriage, nothing is what it seems. His older son, Jonah, is gay. His younger son, Ethan, plays the violin and hopes to come back from the dead as a flower. Wife Jeannie (Helen Hunt) has sacrificed her own ambitions to take care of her alcoholic and terminally ill father (Brian Dennehy). Ned's boss (Eddie Izzard) is a demanding, mean-spirited slave driver who eschews sensitivity, demanding trashy scripts full of shock value, kinky sex and political incorrectness and barking idiotic orders to his baffled stable of writers ("Bestiality? Sex with one's dog is the new sex with one's cat!!"). His father-in-law (Brian Dennehy) has moved in with his wheelchair, muttering about his weak bladder and irritated bowels. Ned's sexy new writing partner (Carla Gugino) seduces him into pot smoking, cocaine and skinny-dipping. Sometimes the film delivers surprising metaphors for angst ("Criticism is like medicine. There's no easy way to give it. You just take it--if you want to get better"). Although the acting is first-rate, the writing suffocates in negativity. The theme is that happiness, given certain family dynamics, is an unrealistic expectation. But Every Day is too relentlessly depressing to recommend to the everyday audience. It seems to be on automatic pilot. Horrible, sad things keep happening, but it just goes on.

rreed [at] observer.com

Every Day
Running time 93 minutes
Written and directed by Richard Levine
Starring Liev Schreiber,
Helen Hunt, Brian Dennehy

2/4

More Mulroney, Please! Dermot Mulroney Is Exceptional in the Worthy Inhale

Rex Reed — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 02:27:36 -0400

Soberly and responsibly, a small but significant film called Inhale, starring the underrated, charismatic and terrifically accomplished Dermot Mulroney, has arrived without fanfare or big-budget ad campaigns to capture some well-deserved attention. It tackles the growing horror of organ tourism--the search for illegal alternatives to long waiting lists for organ transplants that never happen. According to this eye-opening dossier on the subject, 15,000 sick people each year fall victim to organ trafficking by organized crime. These surgeries are often performed under the eye of local and national governments, health ministries and professional medical associations, without the donor's consent. You will go away with your heart full and your eyes wide open.

The dynamic Mr. Mulroney and Diane Kruger play a New Mexico district attorney and his wife whose daughter is diagnosed with a progressive lung disease that only a double lung transplant can cure. Swallowing his principles like castor oil, this tough, by-the-books prosecutor finds himself bending the law himself when faced with the life-or-death decision of buying an organ on the black market. Aided by a kind pediatrician (Rosanna Arquette) and a powerful politician (Sam Shepard), he heads for the Texas border in El Paso and crosses over into Juarez with only one name in his wallet, one that turns out to be phony. With the demand for transplants 10 times the supply, and lists growing longer daily, desperate people losing hope are investigating new ways to buy organs illegally. Mexico is apparently a source for this kind of dangerous criminal harvesting, and this is a man with enough money to give it a try. Cursed with unalterable morality, he nevertheless ventures deeper into the Mexican underworld, risking his own life. Helped along by an unscrupulous street urchin, his search leads him through a warren of male prostitutes, child murders, gang beatings and even a ward full of children awaiting death sentences. One by one, the clues unravel with the tempo of a hair-frying thriller.

In Mexico, the death rate from violence and drug wars is three times that in the U.S. So the removal of organs from dead bodies goes unchecked. You'll find yourself asking a lot of ethical questions, and you might be surprised at the answers you find. Shattered by his own conscience and growing lack of integrity, a noble character begins to lose his grip on reality. Should he break the law and win his family's everlasting love and gratitude? Or reject the corruption and lose his own child? I won't tell you how it turns out, but the dilemma builds a special brand of suspense that is wrenching. The subject matter was handled with more originality and Grand Guignol in Stephen Frears' memorable film Dirty Pretty Things. Baltasar Kormakur, an acclaimed festival-circuit favorite from Iceland, does not have enough grip to furnish Inhale with the same kind of arc, so the characters seem like papier-mâche symbols instead of fully fleshed-out human beings, but Mr. Mulroney is an exception, giving an honest, committed and deeply moving performance of tortured sincerity. He's better-looking and more virile and versatile than either, so why isn't he a superstar on the same plane as Brad Pitt and Matt Damon?

rreed@observer.com

INHALE
Running time 83 minutes
Written by Walter A. Doty and John Claflin
Directed by Baltasar Kormakur
Starring Dermot Mulroney, Diane Kruger, Rosanna Arquette, Sam Shepherd

3/4

Observer » INHALE

Taking the Fun Out Of Dysfunctional

More Mulroney, Please! Dermot Mulroney Is Exceptional in the Worthy Inhale