Review of The Benefactor (2015) by Sean H — 18 Jan 2016

Somewhere in the new Richard Gere film The Benefactor are 2 pretty good movies. Unfortunately writer/director Andrew Renzi combined two projects into one and made a sloppy and uneven film instead. While the reason behind Franny's (Gere) need to be a benefactor as well as need to be a morphine addicted billionaire are both linked to the death of his two best friends in a car accident that he survived, the film would have been better served as a creepy stalker horror type had he decided to become very intrusive on his now deceased best friends daughter Olivia (Dakota Fanning) and her new husband the good doctor Luke (Theo James - Four from the Divergent series) and their as yet unborn child, it could have gotten very weird and uncomfortable. It often was, especially with some sexually tense moments between Franny and Luke that became so because of the monetary power Franny held over the young couple. A doctor that would allow himself to be coerced into taking ecstasy but not be talked into writing a prescription for morphine is a curious set of moral values. Franny could easily have threatened Luke with a toxicology screening now that he had the drugs in his system in order to get what he wanted, but he didn't. Instead he went to extreme measures of self mutilation to try and get he wanted. It just doesn't fit into a strong narrative structure.

Alternately, this could have been a film about the kindly father figure type that Franny would become as they grew as a family unit and Franny helped foot the bills to make it all happen and then later would have worked through his addiction to painkillers together for a very nice and warm film giving Gere a chance to spread his wing's some as someone undergoing treatment for a severe morphine addiction.

But that didn't happen either. Instead we get a third of a film about the kindly benefactor who is also perhaps around too much for a third of the film and then starts to lose it when he can't get his drugs anymore. I have issues with a script that has a man who can move a few things around at his bank to buy a Philadelphia suburbs home on a giant lot and pay off $400,000 in student loan debt not having enough money to be able to get what he needs prescribed to him.

In the end the film lacks focus and leaves us wanting out instead of wanting more. Two people at my screening walked out around the 40 minute mark never to be seen again.

This Queen was bored. 1 out of 5 rainbows.

1 rainbow - How did this get funded?

2 rainbows - You might find something of interest here but unlikely.

3 rainbows - Serves as a useful and entertaining enough distraction as a matinee.

4 rainbows - Stop reading this review and find a theater showing this film now!

5 rainbows - I'll need to find a spot for this in my Top 100 list. Absolutely flawless.