Review of The Son of No One (2011) by Jack G — 01 Nov 2011

Dito Montiel's mete is the 'gritty dramatic thriller' (in quotes). He likes his actors usually meaty New York city talent, and/or with the stolid lead (Channing Tatum), with wall to wall music scoring and hand-held camera. His intention as a filmmaker is to get the raw, rough material that comes out of drama of the street-life, of consequences and contrasting troubled youth with adulthood (I'm going more-so by this new film and his autobiographical debut A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, I've yet to see his film Fighting from two years ago). It's a shame then that his intentions get mixed up in his slightly muddled narrative and some two-dimensional caricatures, in this case of cops.

Tatum's Jonathan is a rookie cop at thirty with a wife (Katie Holmes) and a young daughter, and as odd luck would have it his first assignment is to the 118th in Queens, where his father was a (hero) cop who died in the line of duty. He's also got a helluva skeleton in his closet - as a child in the awful Queensboro projects he killed two people, a junkie and low-life in self-defense and accident respectively - and this being covered up by his father's partner (Al Pacino, don't get too excited, he's only in a few scenes). But it comes back to more than haunt him: letters to a local paper in Queens are published about the murders, the cover-up, and he gets calls and warning about it subsequently. Who's calling him? Who's watching? is it Jonathan's friend, Vincent, from the projects (Tracy Morgan as an adult, Brian Gilbert as a child), or someone right from the 118th?

Montiel also makes the story choice, and it wasn't a necessary one, of setting this right after 9/11 in 2002. There could have been a good point made here, about life and death or honor or the NYPD in general, but he really doesn't so much with it past some initial clips at the start of the movie (i.e. Bush and Giuliani on a TV), and one or two references by Liotta's Captain Carter character; a much more effective reference (to Abadu Dialo, sic) comes from him after an altercation with a criminal: "And they wonder why we shoot these guys 40 times". It's the sort of backdrop that should either get some strong attention thematically for the story (i.e. 25th Hour) or not really at all. The story could still be set later in the 00's and the 80's back-and-forth and still work without it.

The story with Jonathan's moral crisis, about this past with these bursts of violence, does work - for a while - mostly as the 1986 projects scenes fulfill Montiel's aim for a harrowing dramatic scope. The space is cramped ands grungy, mostly in dirty fluorescent lit stairways, and the children actors (Gilbert especially, but Jake Cherry as young Jonathan is intuitive-good too) feel like they were lifted up from the same playground. I felt for these kids and this near-impossibly hard situation.

But in the story, there's complications, mostly in that I didn't find the letters-to-reporter and cover-up totally convincing; at some point a loose-end would come up over the subsequent years, even a cover-up for low-lifes. Also, there's only so much time spent between Tatum and Tracy Morgan - the latter surprisingly convincing with few lines as a mentally disturbed individual, a turn from him I would not expect in the slightest from the roles he's had before - or really in their flashbacks to get how their friendship really is.

And, ultimately, there's one other glaring problem I've yet to come to, and that is Tatum himself. I still am not sure how much this guy can act in smaller roles, much less the lead in a film that requires some real dramatic 'Umph!" on camera. Especially when up against a pro (Liotta) and a damn-near legend (Pacino) he's gotta bring something else to the table. But as in other (or maybe even all?) of his performances to date, he mostly sits stone-faced, mumbles some lines, and at best gives some convincing jaw-flexes to show some agitation during a scene, such as when Liotta's Captain confronts him about the letters. Montiel also cast him in 'Saints' though in a mostly less-demanding role, and it wasn't as bad. Here, his empty stare and lack of anything past being a block of wood becomes painfully obvious and despairs what is really so powerful in the film.

Somewhere inside Son of No One is a fantastic cop drama waiting to wriggle out. Maybe Sidney Lumet could have pulled a classic out of it even. For Montiel, it's like an exercise that comes close, but far from a cigar-terrain.