Dutcher puts violence in sharp focus in bloody but redemptive 'Falling'
By Sean P. Means
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 01/18/2008 12:15:12 AM MST
WHERE: Megaplex 12 at The Gateway, Salt Lake City.
WHEN: Opens Friday.
RATING: R for strong brutal violence, bloody images and language.
RUNNING TIME: 83 minutes.
BOTTOM LINE: A lapsed Mormon faces a spiritual crisis on L.A.'s mean streets in this disturbing but rewarding drama.
3 out of 4 stars
'Falling' marks a radical departure for filmmaker Richard DutcherIt has been fascinating, and sometimes a bit disquieting, to watch Richard Dutcher's progress as an artist - from the LDS-friendly melodrama of "God's Army" through the more challenging and thought-provoking stories of "Brigham City" and "States of Grace."
"Disquieting" barely begins to describe Dutcher's latest film, "Falling," a dark and personal story of one man's troubled and bloody path to redemption.
Dutcher - who wrote, directed, co-produced and co-edited the film - stars as Eric, an L.A. videographer who works freelance, taping graphic accidents and crime scenes and selling the footage. It's a dirty job, and the toll of seeing all that violence is wearing on Eric, a nonpracticing Mormon, and his young wife, Davey (Virginia Reece).
When Eric gets footage of a crime in progress, he faces a double ethical dilemma. First, does he keep shooting or does he help the victim? Second, does he take the tape to the cops or sell it to a TV station? Eric's answers to both questions have devastating consequences. Meanwhile, Davey faces her own moral crisis. A struggling actress, she has the chance to get a dream role - but only if she gives in to the producer's advances.
The movie gets down and dirty on the L.A. streets as Dutcher gets a gritty handheld look from cinematographer Jim Orr. Dutcher's D.I.Y. approach extends to the lack of a music score and his own wrenching performance, which culminates in a blood-drenched finale that will shock the audience.
Actually, there's much in "Falling" that will shock the audience - especially those who know Dutcher only from "God's Army." Dutcher has traced a spiritual path for his characters that doesn't allow for easy answers, and the results are more authentic and rewarding because of it.
Over-the-top 'Falling' is bleak and unpleasant
By Jeff Vice
Deseret Morning News
Published: January 18, 2008
FALLING — ** — Richard Dutcher, Virginia Reece; rated R (violence, gore, profanity, vulgarity, brief sex, brief nudity, slurs)
"Falling" feels very much like the work of a filmmaker who's trying to push audience buttons rather than trying to tell a coherent, cohesive story.
That's really nothing new for filmmaker/local writer/director Richard Dutcher. Nearly all of his works have had their button-pushing moments (especially his 2005 "God's Army" follow-up, "States of Grace").
But nothing in that film could have prepared anyone for this dramatic thriller, which goes so far over the top that it almost turns into an unintentional comedy.
Also, the film merits its R rating. In addition to some sure-to-be-controversial religious and spiritual themes, there's strong language, sexual material and disturbingly violent, sometimes gory sequences. An ending sequence almost seems to have been torn from "Death Wish" or the more recent remakes, "Death Sentence" and "The Brave One."
In addition to his writing and directing duties, Dutcher also stars as Eric Boyle, a California-based, freelance news photographer who's having an intensely personal spiritual crisis.
Eric wants to make movies but instead finds himself filming tragedies for television news. That's left him feeling more than a little bit empty inside.
Meanwhile, Eric's wife, Davey (Virginia Reece), faces her own challenges. She's trying to make it as an actress but is unsure just how far she's willing to go to get to the top.
To be fair, it's not a horrible set-up for a movie, and you can appreciate what Dutcher is trying to do here — at least to a point. But this material is so unpleasant and relentlessly bleak and is so in-your-face that it's ridiculous.
Also, you wish he had cast someone else in the main role. While Dutcher has been decent in support in a couple of his own films, he's just not a compelling enough presence to carry this material.
Relative newcomer Reece does fare a little better, even though her character is a little unsympathetic, at least as she's written.
"Falling" is rated R for strong scenes of violence (shootings, stabbings, brawling, a beating and violence against women, including domestic violence and an implied sexual assault), graphic blood and gore, strong sexual language (profanity, vulgar slang terms and other suggestive talk), brief sexual contact, brief female nudity, and slurs based on race, gender and sexual preference. Running time: 83 minutes.
Thursday, 17 January 2008
Super violent 'Falling' a victim of its own excesses
Cody Clark - DAILY HERALD
"Falling," the new film by Richard Dutcher, begins by lifting a "grabber" from its climax, playing that scene out of context, and then flashing back to the real beginning of our story "four days earlier."
There are a lot of possible rationales for starting the movie with that particular gimmick. Since the scene's main point of emphasis, however, is for the person who's clearly our main character and recognizably played by Dutcher to, after failing to prevent a death, bitterly repeat the R-rated vulgarism, "(Fetch) you," while staring up in a direction usually associated with God, it's hard not to wonder whether the ex-patron saint of Mormon cinema isn't at least a little bit raising the middle finger to his former faith and fan base.
No, "Falling" is not another "God's Army" movie.
It's harder to pin down what, exactly, it is. The evidence of the film is that Dutcher himself couldn't quite make up his mind. It could have been about the loss and/or rediscovery of spirituality. It could have been about the disillusionment of trying to make it in the movie industry. It could have been about the emotional space between two people who try to live together but are both keeping one foot out the door. It could have been about the inner corruption of repeated exposure to violence, or the cold cynicism of our increasingly tabloid mainstream news media.
All of those ideas get some play, and any of them could have carried the movie by itself. The interrelation of them feels forced, however, and what emerges most powerfully in the end is a fairly simplistic manifesto about reaping what you sow.
The guy from the first scene is Eric Boyle (Dutcher), a freelance videographer who shoots graphic footage of accidents, crime scenes and small-scale disasters around Los Angeles that's brokered to news stations by a shady, two-bit producer (Frank Uzzolino). Eric, who's a lapsed Latter-day Saint, lives with Davey (Virginia Reece), an aspiring actress who's probably not his wife, though the precise parameters of their relationship are never specified.
One day Eric spies a trio of hoodlums harrassing an older guy and, after the situation escalates, grabs his camera and starts to film. The sale of the tape nets him $20,000, but the hoodlums aren't happy about their newfound notoriety, and the result is an increasingly violent spiral of tragic consequences.
Dutcher has a gift for realism that keeps us invested in his characters even as the movie's plot starts to fall apart. You get the sense that he spent a lot of time on details, like having the car that Eric drives, a roaring old beater SUV, be just right (which it is).
And there are potent echoes of the fiery religious conviction of his earlier films. Wherever he is in his own spiritual journey, it's clear that Dutcher still cares about questions of faith.
Oddly, the scenes in "Falling" that are clearly a passionate insider's view of the seamier aspects of the movie industry are some of the film's least involving. They're too self-contained, for one thing, and too on-the-nose. Eric meets with a movie producer whose dismissive rant about getting to the "marrow" sounds more like a screenwriting exercise than something a real person would say. And a moment where Davey is disparaged by her acting coach is both simplistic and unconvincing.
Dutcher's ground-level realism works against him after the angered hoodlums begin to wreak their vengeance with an almost supernatural ability to both find people and avoid the police. There also are moments when Dutcher contradicts his own moralizing, like when he deliberately crafts a long, slow build to our first glimpse of a pretty newscaster's horribly disfigured face.
And while there's a sense that the screenplay is meant to visit a perfect storm of unintended consequences on Eric and Davey, the extent to which their lives completely break down is still too much to be believed. And that's well before the film's disgusting, reprehensibly violent ending.
The violence of the final scene, actually, is so sickeningly graphic that it's cause to wonder what it would have taken to make the MPAA give Dutcher an NC-17 already. It's also so far beyond the scope of what we've been shown about Eric's character as to be almost laughable.
"States of Grace," Dutcher's last film before this one, understood its own intentions so thoroughly that the frenzied incoherence of "Falling" is almost more tragic than anything that happens to its characters.
C-
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