In the lexicon of American prison language, an SFK is not the most desirable status in the hierarchy of a high security jail.
An SFK is a "sick, f*****g kid" - in this case Leland P Fitzgerald (Gosling), an unremarkable teen but for the fact he's stabbed a mentally retarded boy to death for no reason.
Well, for no reason we can make out until his life is mapped out by prison teacher and frustrated writer Pearl Madison (Cheadle), who has his own morally questionable agenda as dollar signs flash above a bestseller.
It seems that Leland is the unremarkable product of a collapsed marriage between desperate housewife-type Lena Olin and her unpleasant novelist husband Albert (Spacey)...
He's the kind of guy that casually corrects the punctuation of a magazine advert for a cancer charity and boasts he could knock off twelve novels "based on the light and shade in this bar". He's a cold-hearted, egotistical prat.
As Pearl dives deeper, it emerges that Leland was going out with the dead boy's junkie sister Becky (Malone), who regarded Leland as her "guardian angel".
However, it didn't stop her dumping him for a shifty skag dealer, leaving Leland in anything but a united state and questioning the nature of what makes people happy.
Meanwhile, as Leland's recent history is being coaxed out, Pearl is happily bonking a prison secretary while his girlfriend is blissfully oblivious in Los Angeles.
Actually, after an hour in the company of Leland, Pearl, Albert et al, it seems she's in the best possible place - hundreds of miles from this lot with the sun shining.
Debut director Matthew Ryan Hoge clumsily attempts to draw comparisons with Leland's unspeakable crime and Pearl's dodgy faithlessness... but - funnily enough - it doesn't work.
As Leland's motive takes ever more fanciful dramatic swerves, it disappears into the thin air of fantasy and the whole shebang threatens to float way.
You can't fault the acting...but the cumulative effect is to ponder the question where's the nearest bathroom to open a vein.
Tim Evans.
|
