>>REVIEW
DOWN IN THE VALLEY
STARRING Edward Norton, Evan Rachel Wood and David Morse
DIRECTED BY David Jacobson
Opens Friday, June 9
Uptown Screen
An ambitious labour of love for star and co-producer Edward Norton, Down in the Valley sets an old-fashioned movie western in territory that’s long since been swallowed up by suburbs.
The valley in question is the San Fernando, where two adolescent siblings – Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood) and her younger brother Lonnie (Rory Culkin) – live in a ramshackle bungalow with their pa Wade (David Morse). A sullen prison guard, Wade pays more attention to his gun collection than his kids.
Trouble arrives in the seemingly sweet form of Harlan (Norton), a big-hearted cowpoke from South Dakota who talks like he just walked off the set of Bonanza. After they spend an afternoon at the beach, Harlan sweeps Tobe off her feet… and it don’t matter none to him that those feet are as underaged as the rest of her. Wade, on the other hand, is rather more concerned about this whirlwind romance, as well as Harlan’s subtler courting of the meek Lonnie. If Harlan seems too good to be true, that’s because he is.
Writer-director David Jacobson’s effort is hardly the only recent movie to dress up western tropes in contemporary duds – A History of Violence, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and Don’t Come Knocking all did the same with varying levels of success. Jacobson mixes nods to classic westerns (one scene literally comes straight out of My Darling Clementine) with references to more idiosyncratic outlaw tales like Taxi Driver and Badlands.
But all this flattery gets us nowhere. While Down in the Valley’s first hour simmers with tension, thanks to the intensifying relationship between the lovers, Jacobson then overplays his hand. Already rangy, his movie grows tedious as Harlan and Wade near their inevitable gundown and Norton, so magnetic in the early scenes, loses his hold on our attention after Harlan’s true face is revealed. Bold moments here and there suggest what could’ve been, but the movie’s promise soon makes like a tumbleweed. |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.