Adam (Lukas Haas) is a burnout twenty-something living with his parents in Burnoutville, New Jersey. Kicked out of college for paying a prostitute to service him in his dorm-room, he spends his days making sandwiches at a shoddy deli and hanging out with his dead-end friends, who've worked out an elaborate barter system where no one in their circle ever has to pay for anything. Life for Adam, if not bad, is at least comfortably negligible, but things take a turn for the worst when an argument with a co-worker costs him his job. Fed up with his listless behavior, his parents kick him out of the house. Adam gets drunk at the local bar, decides his situation is intolerable, and takes off down the alley vowing to beat up the first person he sees. Lucky for Adam, the first person he sees happens to be a five-time rapist, and an assault that might otherwise have landed him in jail catapults him to the status of a hero, a role he becomes increasingly comfortable with, even after the public loses interest.
You can't knock the premise on this one, nor the casting of Haas, who has the perfect face for the role, nor the stupendous performance of Giovanni Ribisi as Vic, the creepy local drug-dealer, who quickly becomes one of Adam's worst enemies, yet the film suffers from being too in your face with its convictions, always pushing its agenda at the expense of plausibility.
Ever since Taxi Driver, American movies have fascinated themselves with the unlikely superhero, whose obsession with justice leads him or her into vigilantism, into working outside of the box. Within this tradition, Gardener of Eden takes a bold stance, going so far as to suggest that the heroes in our midst are not only inhibited by society, but are flat-out unwanted. I admire the effort, but I'm less impressed by the movie's lack of confidence in our capacity to grasp this concept for ourselves. The dialogue is forced, and the situations often come across feeling contrived or inauthentic, all a by-product of the movie's clumsy and excessive effort to drive its message home.
You can't knock the premise on this one, nor the casting of Haas, who has the perfect face for the role, nor the stupendous performance of Giovanni Ribisi as Vic, the creepy local drug-dealer, who quickly becomes one of Adam's worst enemies, yet the film suffers from being too in your face with its convictions, always pushing its agenda at the expense of plausibility.
Ever since Taxi Driver, American movies have fascinated themselves with the unlikely superhero, whose obsession with justice leads him or her into vigilantism, into working outside of the box. Within this tradition, Gardener of Eden takes a bold stance, going so far as to suggest that the heroes in our midst are not only inhibited by society, but are flat-out unwanted. I admire the effort, but I'm less impressed by the movie's lack of confidence in our capacity to grasp this concept for ourselves. The dialogue is forced, and the situations often come across feeling contrived or inauthentic, all a by-product of the movie's clumsy and excessive effort to drive its message home.