By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

Short Take: The Vicious Kind (views)

Posted Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 - Comments Off on Short Take: The Vicious Kind (views)
Be Sociable, Share!

Lee Krieger‘s second feature, The Vicious Kind, is a tale of forgiveness and redemption told through the character of Caleb Sinclaire (Adam Scott), an intensely unpleasant construction worker whose bitterness and misogyny masks a deeply wounded man whose outward anger acts as a shield against the world.


Caleb is in the throes of heartache after being cheated on by his girlfriend, and when younger brother Peter (Alex Frost) brings his new girlfriend Emma (Brittany Snow) home for Thanksgiving, he warns Peter that she will break his heart. But when he meets Emma, Caleb finds himself intensely attracted to her and struggles with his conflicting emotions around not wanting to hurt his brother and obsessing over Emma.
Scott turns in a powerful performance as Caleb, who vacillates between outbursts of violent, irrational anger and apologetic platitudes. I expected within the first ten minutes to completely loathe this character, but Scott’s performance manages to make this outwardly unlikable man deeply sympathetic. Caleb acts and reacts like and abused child or wounded animal; he lashes out seemingly without provocation, threatening Emma one minute and trying to kiss her the next. His behavior feels completely random and on the edge; one minute he’s talking about how all women are whores who will break your heart, but the next he’s beating up a group of guys at a bar for being rude to a woman there. He talks tough and avoids relationships with most people, but his one friend is a gentle mentally disabled man who idolizes him, and while he’s rude to his brother and taunts him, he’s also fiercely protective of him.
The estranged relationship between Caleb and his father (J.K. Simmons) adds another intricate layer to the puzzle of who he is. Caleb doesn’t speak to his father, he refers to him only as “Donald,” and when he shows up at his father’s house, Donald threatens to shoot him if he turns up on his property again. Yet for all that he pretends not to care about his father, Caleb stalks the house, seeking a connection with his father that’s long since been severed. Yet even in the scenes where father and son provoke each other, you can see the deep wounds that haunt them both.
This is a tough, edgy film bolstered by powerful performances, but the material is so raw and wrenching that some may find it hard to watch. I honestly thought at first that I wasn’t going to like it at all, but ended up liking it so much I watched it twice, the better to appreciate the nuance Scott brings to his role. Caleb’s a broken man, the kind of guy you’d advise your daughter to run far away from, but there’s hope of redemption within both him and the story.

Be Sociable, Share!

Posted in 10 Days of Sundance | Comments Off on Short Take: The Vicious Kind (views)

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon