Review of First Reformed (2018) by Kenr — 24 Apr 2019

This was another movie I knew nothing about before watching, had I known it was a Paul Schrader story I may have even given it a miss. Schrader’s direction is slow but stylish or maybe he left a lot of the creative, visual decisions, to his director of photography: Alexander Dynan (Dog Eat Dog). But, good looking images and performances do not atone for a clumsily developed script. The first half seemed as if it could be moving into interesting territory - before it trailed off into the now predictable ground that’s getting high ‘praise’ of late. Those who regard themselves as better than the majority of movie viewers might think this is rather arty, and see themselves among the few smart enough to ‘interpret’ what is really going on. To these I say, it’s very easy to read into any story what you want to see.

Overall, this comes across as little more than ‘topical’ propaganda with a heavy-handed climate change cliché being substituted for any real character study or true depth. Take the character representing the energy companies executive - as expected; he’s portrayed as the typical insensitive, aggressive bully - buying votes and support from everyone including the church officials that our local pastor (Ethan Hawk) works for. Hawk is very good in his role but his character's actions become quickly unhinged and downright foolish - right up to the somewhat laughable ending (some viewers asked, “What happened, did the film break”? This somewhat uninspired work uses scripture based interpretations to manipulate the un-informed, and hook the lazy viewer towards its skewed viewpoints. Could it be that Mr Schrader may need to consider an overdue retirement? – his current writings seem all about recycling character elements of his earlier stories – this one is simply ‘Taxi Driver’ in a church setting, and somewhat poorly transposed at that.

The Academy and the likes of the Scorsese’s of this ‘darkness obsessed’ movie world - may see greatness in these often shambolic works but from the looks of the ticket-buying public, they, are not buying these ideas – so, according to box office returns many of these movies are actually more likely to end up lingering on the shelves. After jotting out these remarks, I curiously checked for other viewer reviews and found some of interest on IMDb, I could agree with many including the following: Sandman, PotassiumMan, and Davegipson, etc, on the first and second pages of viewer reviews ... those, and many more are all worth a read to learn more.

One of the better bits, the marvellous singing voice of Julie Murney performing the old Hoffman/Showalter: ‘Leaning On The Everlasting Arms’ – though, it’s almost wasted here.