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BARRON’S COVE

Producers: Jason Michael Berman, Will Raynor, Shaun Sanghani, Jordan Yale Levine, Jordan Beckerman, Chadd Harbold, Cory Thompson and Bannor Michael MacGregor   Director: Evan Ari Kelman   Screenplay: Evan Ari Kelman   Cast: Garrett Hedlund, Hamish Linklater, Brittany Snow, Christian Convery, Tramell Tillman, Raúl Castillo, Stephen Lang, Marc Menchaca, Guy Lockard, Peter McRobbie, Danny Mastrogiogio and Elia Monte-Brown   Distributor: Well Go USA Entertainment

Grade: C+

Here’s a revenge movie different from most made nowadays.  Rather than the simple-mindedness of the “Taken” series and its ilk, Evan Ari Kelman’s debut feature opts for something more morally complicated, fashioning between its two main characters an alink that’s gray instead of black-and-white.  Unfortunately, as it progresses “Barron’s Cove” descends increasingly into melodrama, and its initial promise of sensitive nuance devolves into something much more heavy-handed.

Garrett Hedlund is a powerful presence as Caleb Faulkner, a troubled soul prone to violence who works as an enforcer for his uncle Benji (Stephen Lang), a hard-headed dealer in building supplies in their medium-sized town (read: local crime boss).  Divorced from Jackie (Brittany Snow) but trying to maintain a relationship with his young son Barron (Dante Hale), Caleb suffers an unspeakable tragedy after his uncle demands that he put immediate pressure on some customers who have been doing business with competitors. 

The assignment forces him to skip picking up Barron after school for a father-son outing, and left on his own the boy is waylaid by class bully Ethan (Christian Convery), who takes him to the nearby railroad tracks and ties him down on them.  When his wimpy confederate Phillip (Riley Torres) informs him that a train’s barreling down on them, Ethan tries to untie Barron, but it’s too late, and Barron is killed.

Since Ethan’s the son of local pol Lyle Chambers (Hamish Linklater, oozing malice beneath the smooth exterior he presents in public)–the son of the governor (Peter McRobbie) and a candidate for state office himself, who has Police Chief Alberts (Marc Menchaca) in his pocket—the death is quickly written off as an accident, or even a suicide, despite the misgivings of new detective Navarro (Raúl Castillo), whose desire to investigate further is stymied by his boss.

So Caleb takes matters into his own hands.  Suspicious that Ethan and Phillip, the last boys to see Barron alive, were somehow implicated in his death, he accosts Ethan at school, chases the snotty kid into the parking lot and, after the boy’s hit by a car and left unconscious on the pavement, picks him up, plops him into his van and drives off.  It’s not likely that someone wouldn’t have intervened in such an obvious abduction, but Caleb gets away and takes Ethan to a remote cabin where he intends to terrify him into admitting the truth.

However implausible the kidnapping, Caleb’s act sets up an intriguing dynamic between a damaged, traumatized father who seems on the verge of torturing a kid into confessing to murder and a boy who thus far appears to be the prototypical bad seed—he even taunts Caleb that Barron committed suicide out of hatred for his father.  But it turns out that Ethan was adopted by Chambers at his father’s insistence for political reasons and that he’s been abused by the loathsome guy, as the scars on his back prove.  Caleb’s paternal instinct kicks in although it’s clear that the boy was involved in his son’s death, and Ethan bonds with Caleb, the captor whom he comes to see as a protector against Lyle.  It’s an interesting turn, although it frankly happens too quickly to be entirely credible. 

The politician, meanwhile, goes to extreme lengths to track Caleb down, intending to use the kidnapping to further his election chances at Ethan’s expense.  Meanwhile Navarro, working on his own, stays on the case without official sanction, though when he comes close to capturing Caleb, Ethan intervenes; Caleb also gets help evading his pursuers from Felix (Tramell Tillman), an old friend who sees how Ethan has bonded with his supposed kidnapper.  When Caleb seeks aid from his uncle, however, Benji places profit over family in order to maintain a working relationship with those in political power.  All of this turns “Barron’s Cove” into less of a thought-provoking drama and more of a conventional crime melodrama, especially in a final confrontation scene involving the two very different fathers.  Kelman tries to blend the disparate elements in a final shot, but frankly it comes off a bit precious, even sappy.

He does, however, secure solid performances from two of his three leads.  Hedlund can be criticized for being unrelentingly intense—some will find him over-the-top—but he does capture Caleb’s desperation as a decidedly imperfect man trying to do the right thing.  And Convery manages the shift from totally obnoxious to sympathetic well, even though it’s awfully abrupt.  Linklater, meanwhile, is convincing as a smoothly duplicitous politician but less so in Lyle’s other side as a malevolent conniver.  (We’re only given a hint that he had daddy issues too—a matter than might have been explored.)  The rest of the cast are more than adequate, with Lang doing his usual reliable work and Tillman scoring nicely with simple openheartedness.  Castillo and Menchaca are stuck in stock roles they can’t do much with; the same could be said of Snow, though toward the close she does get to show some shading in a scene where she’s pressured to betray her ex.

Shot in the area around Springfield, Massachusetts, “Barron’s Cove” is given a gritty look by production designer Jordan Crockett and cinematographer Matthew Jensen, and the score by Brivik and James Newberry responds well to the story’s emotional twists.  Hanna Park’s editing is capable, though it can’t camouflage the occasional shortcomings of a limited budget.

“Barron’s Cove” doesn’t deliver on its first-act potential, but its sincerity goes a long way to encourage you to stick with it to the end, even if the last act ultimately proves disappointing.  

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THE RITUAL

Producers: Ross Marks, Andrew Stevens, Mitchell Welch and Enrico Natale   Director: David Midell   Screenplay: David Midell and Enrico Natale   Cast: Al Pacino, Dan Stevens, Ashley Greene, Abigail Cowen,  Maria Camila Giraldo, Meadow Williams, Courtney Rae Allen, Enrico Natale, Liann Pattison, Patrick Fabian, Richie Montgomery, Emily Brinks and Patricia Heaton   Distributor: XYZ Films

Grade: D

This exorcism movie is distinguished by the fact that it’s based on an actual incident of purported demonic possession that occurred in 1928, and its major characters are named after the principals in it.  An account of the event based on a memoir by one of the priest officiants was published by Carl Vogl in Germany and translated into English as “Begone, Satan!” in 1935 (the following year Time Magazine published a report on the episode), and director David Midell and his co-writer Enrico Natale have obviously used it in constructing their script.  Of course, they made some alterations in the cause of dramatic urgency (for example, the actual exorcism occurred in three stages between August and December, but it’s compressed into a much shorter span here).

In all other respects, unfortunately, “The Ritual” is thoroughly undistinguished.  Despite the presence of a strong cast, it’s a drab, uninspired affair that can’t compare with the granddaddy of the genre, William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” (1973).  Although that film (and the 1971 best-seller by William Peter Blatty on which it was based) were inspired by a different “real” exorcism (that of Roland Doe in 1949), some of their details show the influence of Vogl’s account of the earlier episode.  (In return, one discerns strong echoes of “The Exorcist” here.)     

The narrative is, rather curiously, centered on Father Joseph Steiger, the pastor of St. Joseph’s Catholic parish in Earling, Iowa, who, according to this version, was assigned the job of hosting the ritual by his bishop (Patrick Fabian) against his better judgment: he was himself struggling emotionally at the time, his brother Michael having committed suicide only recently, and he was reluctant to welcome the Capuchin friar Theophilus Riesinger (Al Pacino) and the possessed woman Emma Schmidt (Abigail Cowen) to the Franciscan convent next door, where Riesinger was to conduct the ceremony with Steiger’s assistance as well as that of several of the nuns.  In reality Steiger and Riesinger were, the record suggests, acquainted before 1928, and rather than being surprised by the bishop’s assignment, the pastor was instrumental in arranging for the exorcism to be held in Earling.

But “The Ritual” glides over that inconvenient fact, and becomes an account of Father Steiger’s initial discomfort over what he considers the mistreatment of Schmidt, a skeptical attitude transformed gradually by the experience into commitment to see the ceremony through and even take charge of its culminating phase—not unlike what Father Karras does at the close of “The Exorcist,” albeit not to a similar extreme.  Steiger’s inspired, moreover, by reference to his late brother’s name, Michael, in calling on the archangel for assistance.  (Recall Karras’ grief over the recent death of his mother, and how the demon used it against him.)

There are dramatic possibilities in this, but Midell and Natale flub them badly.  “The Ritual” mostly limps along at a pokey pace, hobbled by desultory editing by co-writer/co-producer Natale (who also takes on a small role as a doctor called in by Steiger at a crucial point) and by jerky, hand-held cinematography from Adam Biddle.  The DP isn’t helped by the cramped locations (in Mississippi, not Iowa)—at one point the action’s transferred to a little cellar that’s called a catacomb!—and by effects (levitation, heavy makeup) that are rudimentary at best.  The interior of the church that was employed is very nice in the old style, but otherwise the production design by Julie Toche is basically catch-as-catch-can, and there’s a score (by Jason Lazarus and Joe Trapanese) that leaves no impression whatever.

Pacino offers a surprisingly low-key turn as the avuncular Riesinger, mumbling most of his dialogue in an unidentifiable accent but intoning the lines of the ritual (in English, not Latin, though the latter language is rightly employed in snippets of the masses of the period) with something approaching conviction (and there are lots of them).  Cowen does her best as the possessed woman, spewing out the familiar threats and insults, but Stevens (who reportedly replaced Ben Foster as shooting began) gives a terrible performance, all frantically empty histrionics that are especially risible beside Pacino’s restraint.

The other major performance comes from Ashley Greene, who’s suitably demure as Sister Rose, a dedicated young nun who pays a price for getting too close to the disturbed woman when a piece of her scalp is ripped off; the other sisters (played by Maria Camila Giraldo, Meadow Williams, Liann Pattison and Courtney Rae Allen) are mostly window-dressing, though Patricia Heaton gets some mileage out of the role of the stern Mother Superior, who regrets allowing her convent to be used for such a troublesome purpose but, like Steiger, comes around in the end.  Fabian seems uncomfortable in the episcopal garb he dons for his single scene.

There have been so many exorcism movies since 1973, varying from pure horror to silly spoof, that new ones need to do something radically different to merit more than a passing glance.  “The Ritual” just treads overly familiar territory in a thoroughly pedestrian fashion.  Claiming an imprimatur of authenticity is hardly enough to make it worth watching.