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Review by Harvey Karten
No Rating Supplied
When Abraham received a vision from God to sacrifice his
son Isaac, he became a statesman of biblical proportions by
refusing to rebel against the order. When Joan of Arc received
a vision from God to unite the French and drive out the English,
she became one of the Western world's great heroes. Yet
nowadays people who insist that they receive visions from God
are labeled anything from the broad "insane" to the more
specific "schizophrenic." Modern psychoanalysis has a lot to do
with our current disbelief in visions, which is why we see the
actions of the older Meiks, called simply Dad (Bill Paxton) in that
actor's directorial debut, as not only psychotic but brutally
homicidal. "Frailty," which gets its name from what the press
notes call the "frailty of human perception" but which is more in
line with that word's definition as "unable to resist temptation," is
a Gothic tale, quite a scary one at points, and one which brings
to mind the better stories of Stephen King, i.e. those tales which
downplay the supernatural element in favor of focusing on the
capacity of ordinary human beings for evil. (By way of contrast,
just think of how unscary Paul Anderson's "Resident Evil" is
laughable, in fact, because of the hackneyed armies of
vampires that keep attacking Milla Jovovich's Alice and regularly
get repelled. There's no humanity in them and therefore no
fright for the audience.)
Like David Fincher's "Se7en" about a detective who falls into
an investigation of a serial killer whose goal is to eliminate
human beings who have committed the deadly sins Paxton's
film deals with a perfectly ordinary guy from a small Texas town
who treats his two kids lovingly, supporting them as an auto
mechanic while the young ones go about their daily lives like
choir boys. What makes this fellow particularly frightening to the
audience is that when he turns into a serial killer, we wonder
whether our next-door neighbor whom we trust to come up with
casseroles for us every so often should be so readily trusted.
When Dad receives a vision from God, called upon him to
destroy, why, Dad does demons in Dallas. Lovingly instructing
his 12 year old son Fenton Meiks (Matt O'Leary) and Fenton's
kid brother Adam (Jeremy Sumpter) of his mission and his
obligation to be a hatchet man, he divides the boys. The
impressionable Fenton resists mightily while Adam is a chip off
the old block.
The story of how first Dad and then Adam become killers is
told in flashback as one of the Meiks brothers (Matthew
McConaughey), now a great many years older, spills the beans
to the local FBI agent Wesley Doyle (Powers Boothe). Meiks
convinces both the agent and us moviegoers of the reason he
waited a long time to indict his sib and dad for serial slays, in
effect giving great credit to Bill Paxton in his debut as a director
and affirming Paxton as one of our finest actors. As Dad, Bill
Paxton subtly plays both the nice guy-next-door and a murderer,
never overdoing his role and, in fact, ignoring the modern
convention of displaying victim's brains on the wall and blood
spurting all over the killer's face. Both Matt O'Leary and Jeremy
Sumpter are real finds as kids, O'Leary convincing us of his
growing hostility toward his dad by incremental steps while
Sumpter gives the perfect portrayal of the impressionable young
mind.
The payoff during the concluding minutes is a doozy worthy of
Stephen King, bringing together a drama of a coming of age
from hell and an ambiguity about the nature of good and evil.
"Frailty" is a powerful, psychological thriller, a Stephen-Esque
sample of solid storytelling.
Copyright © 2002 Harvey Karten
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out of 4
