Review of Affliction (1996) by Lucas Y — 03 Feb 2009

I thought Affliction was terrific, but too many pointless scenes and too many holes. Nick Nolte and James Coburn deserve all the credit for the success. It's scary good how closely they resemble father and son.

As the film progresses, you see Nick Nolte's father come out in him more and more. I'm glad the academies acknowledged both of them. The bad thing about having 2 very strong leading male performances is how underdeveloped the rest of the cast becomes.

Sissy Spacek is normally great, but her character was meaningless and accounted for some very unnecessary dialog. I also thought Willem Dafoe was terribly mis casted even though he's great too. I could have seen Redford playing his character.

As far as the film as a whole, cool story about a man trying desperately not to follow in his fathers footsteps, but loses its essence with the whole hunting accident storyline which I knew all along was just an accident that Nolte was overreacting over.

The believable characters in Nolte and Coburn make it work though somehow.