Review of The Man Without a Face (1993) by Leslie D — 28 Jun 2009

So on one end we have an ex-teacher named Justin McLeod (Mel Gibson) who suffers from a horrific accident, leaving him forever disfigured. And on the other we have a 14 year old smart mouth without a father and in desperate need of tutoring so he can pass an exam that will allow him to enroll in a prestigious boarding school. From there, you can pretty much guess how it plays out. They both end up meeting, becoming friends, and then complications happen with the boy's family and the teacher's past circumstances. It's all predictable stuff, and the movie never really does anything to shy away from the standard formula. This really could have been just another made-for-TV movie. Luckily, the two leads Gibson and Stahl manage to deliver strong enough performances to keep this film afloat. Nick Stahl in his feature film debut is really strong here. He's actually the star in this film while Gibson is just a strong supporting role. It's his responsibility to sort of carry it, and get us to feel for the boy's difficult situations. He does so admirably here, and he's able to craft the standard "I'm-a-rebellious-boy-without-a-father" character into someone we actually can care about. I really got into the scenes that involved him dealing with his family whether it was his emotional roller-coaster of a mother or his equally smart-mouthed sister (Gaby Hoffmann who practically stole the show with her 10 minutes of screentime). Mel Gibson gives a good performance as Justin McLeod. Granted, he's probably the weakest out of some of the mentors in past films (Pacino in Scent of a Woman and Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society), but he plays his character well enough. Maybe he would have been a little stronger if the script gave him more to work with.

All in all, this is a decent drama. It falls through the standard plot points, but it's written and performed well enough to stay interesting.