I give anyone props on taking on a Cormac McCarthy novel and trying to make a film out of it. There have been a few successes "No Country for Old Men", "All the Pretty Horses" and maybe "The Road" -- I found that film below average, myself. But hey, who am I but no one. Did Franco fair well with this one? I don't know yet, I'm only 21 minutes in. What caught my eye; as the title to this review states: Lester Ballard (Scott Haze) has the whitest teeth for a character who appears not to have bathed himself or changed his clothes in over a year. Not saying it isn't possible just seems highly unlikely the dude brushes his teeth once or twice a day, flosses etc., Perhaps it's just me, or not, haven't read but one other review and they didn't mention Ballard's clean shiney teeth.
The last Franco film I saw was "The Institute" (2017). I hated it. Gave it a 1/10. It ripped off "The Wicker Man" from 1973 and pretty much used every female character as nothing but naked girls to whistle at. Idiotic. I did like "The Sound and The Fury" (2014), another difficult novel to make a film out of. What I know about the over 11,000 films and 10,000 TV shows (by episode) I have rated here is there has to be at least one character one attaches themselves to. Whether you have an emotional attachment or not is irrelevant; just need the attachment because it carries you along the story. Makes you pay attention to the little things; makes you wonder if you can relate in some way. Since Ballard is the one you mainly see in this, that's who we get to attach to.
Ballard is an interesting character. I enjoyed the scene where he won the stuffed animals and then enjoyed the fireworks. There you see a sort of gentle side of Ballard. But we know he isn't right in the head and is prone to extreme violence. Mentally he's like a child but not stupid. When he finds the car with the two deceased young boy and girl who died from (more likely) exhaust fumes, at first (like a young pubescent boy) he fondles the girl, leaves, goes back and has sex with her dead body then leaves but leaving the vehicle like it was when he found it, but then he goes back and takes the girl to his shack. Child-like and definitely mentally disturbed.
In the first hour of the film I always got the feeling that he wanted to be 'normal' like everyone else. Like when he buys a dress and makeup for the dead girl he's perpetually in a 'relationship' with. Don't know where he gets his money from, did wonder about that. Maybe his father left him some money before he died. Who knows. The film is actually quite slow in its telling. Not boring, just slow. When the shack caught on fire I did wonder if he would go back in and 'save' the dead girl. To his detriment: he did try to save her. It was sort of sad to see him there with just his stuffed tiger and bear watching the shack, his already dead girlfriend, and the other stuffed bear burn. I actually pitied him for a moment. When he shot his stuffed animals repeatedly while weeping and yelling at them, in that moment I felt he was schizophrenic. Then he became a murderer or more succinct: a serial killer. I think he became a murderer because only the dead or inanimate could love him, in his mind. It's hard to understand such people, I guess.
The last Franco film I saw was "The Institute" (2017). I hated it. Gave it a 1/10. It ripped off "The Wicker Man" from 1973 and pretty much used every female character as nothing but naked girls to whistle at. Idiotic. I did like "The Sound and The Fury" (2014), another difficult novel to make a film out of. What I know about the over 11,000 films and 10,000 TV shows (by episode) I have rated here is there has to be at least one character one attaches themselves to. Whether you have an emotional attachment or not is irrelevant; just need the attachment because it carries you along the story. Makes you pay attention to the little things; makes you wonder if you can relate in some way. Since Ballard is the one you mainly see in this, that's who we get to attach to.
Ballard is an interesting character. I enjoyed the scene where he won the stuffed animals and then enjoyed the fireworks. There you see a sort of gentle side of Ballard. But we know he isn't right in the head and is prone to extreme violence. Mentally he's like a child but not stupid. When he finds the car with the two deceased young boy and girl who died from (more likely) exhaust fumes, at first (like a young pubescent boy) he fondles the girl, leaves, goes back and has sex with her dead body then leaves but leaving the vehicle like it was when he found it, but then he goes back and takes the girl to his shack. Child-like and definitely mentally disturbed.
In the first hour of the film I always got the feeling that he wanted to be 'normal' like everyone else. Like when he buys a dress and makeup for the dead girl he's perpetually in a 'relationship' with. Don't know where he gets his money from, did wonder about that. Maybe his father left him some money before he died. Who knows. The film is actually quite slow in its telling. Not boring, just slow. When the shack caught on fire I did wonder if he would go back in and 'save' the dead girl. To his detriment: he did try to save her. It was sort of sad to see him there with just his stuffed tiger and bear watching the shack, his already dead girlfriend, and the other stuffed bear burn. I actually pitied him for a moment. When he shot his stuffed animals repeatedly while weeping and yelling at them, in that moment I felt he was schizophrenic. Then he became a murderer or more succinct: a serial killer. I think he became a murderer because only the dead or inanimate could love him, in his mind. It's hard to understand such people, I guess.