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Superb character development, hauntingly beautiful soundtrack, excellent photography and a riveting story, with so many layers and characters you actually care about and will wonder about long after.
It is also the first movie I have ever seen which goes beyond cartoon physics and cartoon physiology to present a true picture of traumatic brain injury. Movie heroes are constantly clubbed over the head, blown up and knocked out yet seconds later they are up and fully functional. They never go blind from the blow to the visual cortex, they are never let go from jobs they can no longer do. James Bond, for example, will never end up weeping at the sight of his face in the mirror or working as a night janitor for minimum wage because he is barely able to function.
James Bond and his die-hard buds are live-action cartoon fantasy.
In Real Life (from traffic accidents to falls on stairs, skateboards, bicycles, and icy sidewalks) and real sports (from high school football, hockey and wrestling to the NFL, NHL and WWF) things are very different. Head injuries have real and lasting consequences. Victims must cope with the overwhelming difficulty of daily routines ("I take a shower WITH SOAP") and the loss of the most basic skills ("I make the coffee -- if I remember to grind the beans first") that normal people do on autopilot.
Former high-school hocky star Chris Pratt is one of the injured. He spends his days at an Independent Life Skills Center, undergoing cognitive therapy in hopes of restoring lost function. Lewis, his apartment mate and only friend provides brilliant contrast. Lewis has what we normally see as a handicap -- he is visually blind -- but he has a highly functional brain.
The contrast is particularly vivid when Jeff returns home to find Chris utterly defeated by a can of tomato sauce; he couldn't find the can opener and tried to make-do with a hammer. It's also painfully clear when Lewis sharply interviews Luvlee whom he correctly pegs as very attractive. Waaaaay too attractive given the situation. "What are you doing here?" Blind Lewis sees something terribly wrong with this picture. Chris doesn't see a thing.
Chris looks perfectly normal -- his physical wounds and scars are seen only in a shower scene -- but his brain is broken, and the obvious symptoms of that handicap mostly inspire impatience and derision.
Or, as often happens in Real Life, they mark Chris as Easy Prey.
A bartender takes advantage of a $17.50 tip on a $2.50 bottle of O'Doul's. And Gary Spargo sees him as the perfect patsy for a bank robbery.
Gary is a predator and like most predators, his prey of choice is the weak and the helpless such as:
-- Luvlee, sweet and kind ("There are 9 of us [for dinner]") but far from bright (she doesn't understand why they're feeding only 7). Luvlee is either too dim or too gullible to have a lot of options in life. Nevertheless, she takes Lewis's advice and finally asks the all-important questions: "How will this end?" and "What am I doing here?"
-- A fragile old man. He shuffles down the hallway with his walker until stopped by Gary's menacing heavy, Bone. Who is he? Who does the house belong to? "A friend of a friend . . . " Bone, it seems, "negotiated" with the owners.
-- Chris. Not only Easy Prey, but also conveniently employed as night janitor at an isolated small-town bank awaiting a huge influx of farm money.
These threads combine as Gary tempts Chris with a beautiful girl and dreams of money, power, and independence. Then everything starts to unravel for a young man who is good at heart and cares for his friends, but cannot remember and cannot sequence.
"Naw, you sequence just fine," advised Lewis on the night of the tomato sauce disaster. "You just gotta start at the end and work backwards. You can't tell a story until you know how it ends."
The end? Save Lewis. But how?
Everything else flows from that and from Chris's own innate courage and decency. And of course, from a superb screen writer. I look forward to seeing much more of Scott Frank's work.
As a side note: Some reviewers doubt that Chris would be able or permitted to drive. Do not doubt it. There are many degrees and variations of brain injury. One wonders if Chris the hockey star hadn't suffered a previous TBI resulting in extremely poor judgment (even for an adolescent) -- for example, thinking that speeding down a dark country road with no seatbelts and no headlights was a really cool idea. In fact, there's an extremely low risk of losing a license for anything short of the highly visible symptoms of grand mal seizures or repetitive serious traffic violations. Persons with less visible symptoms can and do legally drive forever (IF, as Gary Spargo points out, they can afford auto insurance that costs even more than their rent). I have several TBI patients, most of whom still drive. One prays for red lights just so that she can remember where she is and where she is going. Another I know of uses her cell phone to call her therapist before leaving for appointments. While driving she hits redial so when the office answers they can remind her of time and destination and guide her in.
Many people should NOT drive -- but they do.
For just how bad a head injury and functionality can be while still driving down a highway near you, google the excellent series on the Pittsburgh Steelers' Iron Mike Webster written by Greg Garber for ESPN. See also Head Games: Football's Concussion Crisis from the NFL to Youth Leagues by former WWF star Christopher Nowinski. See also I'll Carry the Fork! Recovering a Life After Brain Injury for one of the best descriptions of what "mild" traumatic brain injury really means.
For how much better it can get, see The Healing Power of Neurofeedback: The Revolutionary LENS Technique for Restoring Optimal Brain Function by Stephen Larsen. A more technical work with research papers on neurofeedback applied to head injury, ADD, autism, and other disorders is Lens: The Low Energy Neurofeedback System by D. Corydon Hammond.
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| Additional DVD options | Edition | Discs | Price | New from | Used from |
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May 3, 2011 "Please retry" | — | 1 | $25.00 | $3.97 |
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April 14, 2008 "Please retry" | — | 1 | $28.68 | $11.79 |
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- Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2007
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- Amazon customerReviewed in the United Kingdom on July 18, 2024
It's been a long time since I last saw film.
