Title: THE CROSSING GUARD

Date: 6/15/1995; Publication: Magill's Survey of Cinema;

Magill's Survey of Cinema

06-15-1995

THE CROSSING GUARD

Abstract:
Five years ago, Freddy Gale's (Jack Nicholson) life took a tragic dive. John Booth (David Morse) killed Gale's eight-year old daughter in a drunk driving accident. Now Booth is released from prison and an alcoholic, self destructive Gale has vowed to kill him.


Summary:
For someone so young, Sean Penn understands remorse very well. THE CROSSING GUARD, which Penn wrote and directed, shows a disturbing maturity about matters of grief, loss and guilt. Whatever Penn's troubled personal life may have contributed to this film, he clearly has grown into a person who knows the territory of darker, sadder emotions.

As a character study and as a trip to the psychological underworld of humanity, THE CROSSING GUARD is an accomplished and poignant effort. As pure entertainment, it is much less gripping, with long stretches where nothing much happens to advance the dramatic tension. In many respects, from its heavily atmospheric touches to its slow pace, it more resembles a European art film than a Hollywood movie with a big-name star and director. Its distributor seemed puzzled by how to market it, releasing it during the Christmas season where too many blockbusters pushed it off many multiplex screens and into more esoteric venues.

THE CROSSING GUARD explores the mental turmoil of Freddie (Jack Nicholson), a jeweler whose life has been unraveled by the tragic death of his eight-year-old daughter Emily. As the film opens, it's five years after Emily's death, and the man responsible, John Booth (David Morse) is being released from prison after serving a term for manslaughter. Possessed by a need to avenge his loss, Freddie has circled the date of Booth's release in red on his calendar. In a volcanic confrontation with his ex-wife Mary (Anjelica Huston), Freddie says he intends to kill Booth. Mary finds Freddie's plan abhorrent, but Freddie suggests that, if he carries it out, both he and Mary will feel pride and relief.

The name of Booth's character, which minus a middle name is identical to the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln, suggests that Emily's death was just as cataclysmic among those it touched as Lincoln's was for the nation, and gradually the film reveals the scope and depth of the damage that was wrought. Not only did Emily die, but so did Freddie and Mary's marriage, which we find out, a little too late in the film, had been a joyous one. Freddie has lost not only a daughter, but a wife, a house, and all contact with two younger twin sons, who are being raised by Mary and her new husband Roger. Freddie is so damaged he cannot handle being a parent any more and he can hardly handle his business. Taking refuge in forays to a strip club (much as does the lead character in Atom Egoyan's EXOTICA), Freddie can't even handle a sexual relationship with one of the dancers. And what he can't handle at all is the swirling and confusing mix of emotions inside him: the rage, the grief and the loss of his own sense of worth.

Booth, too, Penn allows us to discover, has been irreparably damaged. For half the film, we don't know how Emily died or how culpable Booth was, which adds some needed mystery. In a quiet description of what happened, Booth tells a woman friend how he ran down Emily while driving drunk, then fled after she lay twitching on the pavement, apologizing to him for not looking both ways before she crossed the street. Booth's guilt and shame have left a huge hole in someone who quite obviously had been a very decent person.

The only person who's really grieved over Emily's death and who's had the courage to get on with her life is Mary. One of the best things about Penn's approach is that he resists the temptation to cast Mary as shallow or heartless. Huston, splendid as always in a fairly minor role, conveys a strong sense of how deeply she has been affected by Emily's death in her few scenes with Nicholson, which are among the best in the film. Mary isn't any less damaged than Freddie; she's only managed to do much better at putting the pieces of her life back together.

In fact, Penn casts no judgments on any of his characters. From his surface behavior, Booth appears to be a more decent man than Freddie, but that's only because Booth already has reached the depths of despair and self-abuse and Freddie is still plummeting downward. The film would be more palatable if Freddie were a more likeable character, if he didn't drink and hang out with low-lifes, if he didn't have a hair-trigger temper and a maniacal glint in his eye. It would be more palatable, but much less honest and rewarding.

Nicholson parlays some of his trademark touches--the crazed glare; the soft-spoken, barely controlled rage; the nervous twitches--into one of his best performances. Though as usual it's difficult for Nicholson to submerge his enormous presence as a very familiar actor into a new character, he downplays his usual sarcasm and substitutes much more heartfelt and troubling expressions of deep turmoil. Splendid in his scenes with Huston, Nicholson gives us a man with a deep sense of pride who has been betrayed by life and can't find the way out of his dungeon.

Though Booth is out of jail and Freddie never was confined, THE CROSSING GUARD suggests that emotional prisons are much more impenetrable than the cement-block kind. Morse is fine if perhaps a little too understated, though Penn is much less successful at explicating Booth's emotional state than Freddie's; Morse must say some overly stilted lines such as "Freedom's overrated" and "What is guilt?" Penn wants to contrast Booth's friends' overly introspective encounters with Freddy's friends' drunken stupors, but Booth and his comrades come off sounding a little too much like refugees from a twelve-step meeting.

The film's main failing is that the plot is too simple and there is too much filler before the redeeming conclusion. It's inexplicable that Freddie agrees to Booth's request to give him three extra days to live, but it allows Penn to reveal more about the characters. Freddie's relationship with the stripper seems superfluous, and there are far too many scenes of the strip joint, causing one to wonder if Penn isn't using it as an excuse to put some female flesh into the film. Similarly, Booth's romantic fling seems a little far-fetched; it's not clear why a woman so classy would be so attracted to an ex-con, no matter how dreamy his eyes are. It's also implausible, near the film's end, when Booth undergoes a transformation from a gentle, guilt-wracked soul into a would-be vigilante.

Penn contributes some nice artistic touches, from an opening- scene grief encounter group to a raft of telling cinematic images. But he overuses slow motion and musical interludes so much that some sequences begin to look like music videos. Penn's techniques are a little too self-conscious and heavyhanded; if he had been a little more sparing with these flourishes, they would have been much more successful. THE CROSSING GUARD would be a marvelous film if it had been more tightly edited.

Nonetheless, it's a remarkable second directorial effort for Penn, a sober and deeply affecting film. Penn is wise to resist the temptation to show any flashbacks or even still photos of Emily, so that the lost daughter is a hole in the film, just as she is a hole inside Freddie. It's much more effective for Booth to narrate how she died than for the film to show it; the loss thus becomes more gnawing and awful rather than being reduced to picture-postcard sentiment or nostalgia. THE CROSSING GUARD is not about memory, but about deep black holes of emotion; it's not about trauma, but about the insufferable daily aftermath of unhealed trauma. It's only because Penn, Nicholson and Morse probe these depths so thoroughly and effectively that the reconciliation at film's end may seem a little too pat.

THE CROSSING GUARD isn't easy to endure, but neither is life, as Penn well knows. In a rather brutally honest way, the film is remarkably uplifting. It's a genuine, earnest exploration of difficult territory, taking us down dim, twisted paths but suggesting there is light at the end of the journey. (Reviewed by Michael Betzold.)


Country of Origin: USA

Release Date: 1995

Production Line:
Sean Penn and David S. Hamburger; released by Miramax

Director: Sean Penn

Cinematographer: Vilmos Zsigmond

File Editor: Jay Cassidy

Additional Credits:
Production design - Michael Haller
Costume design - Jill Ohanneson
Sound - Per Hallberg
Casting - Don Phillips
Music - Jack Nitzsche

MPAA Rating: R

Run Time: 114 minutes

Cast:
Freddy Gale - Jack Nicholson
John Booth - David Morse
Mary - Angelica Huston
JoJo - Robin Wright
Helen Booth - Piper Laurie
Stuart Booth - Richard Bradford
Roger - Robbie Robertson

Review Sources:
New York Times. Nov. 15, 1995, p. B1 (N). (Reviewed by Janet Maslin.)
People. Nov. 27, 1995, p. 19. (Reviewed by Leah Rozen.)
Variety. Sept. 11, 1995, p. 104. (Reviewed by David Rooney.)
Wall Street Journal. Nov. 17, 1995, p. A16 (E). (Reviewed by Joe Morgenstern.)

Named persons in Production Credits:
Sean Penn
David S. Hamburger

Studios named in Production Credits:
Miramax

Screenplay (Author):
Sean Penn

Color



Genre:
Drama

Notes:
Second directorial feature from actor/director Sean Penn.

Return to Main Articles Menu Page or Return to Home