What a year for Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line, Her) is set to have. With four movies set for release in 2018, Phoenix is an early favorite for a Best Actor Academy Award for the critically acclaimed and still under-appreciated You Were Never Really Here. Say what you want about that movie if you’ve seen it, but you can’t knock on his amazingly even performance. And the highly anticipated The Sisters Brothers (fall release) is also receiving some early Oscar buzz. As good as he was in You Were Never Really Here and as good as he probably will be in The Sisters Brothers, his performance of the year will be as John Callahan, the quadriplegic cartoon artist in the biopic Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot, a movie that many moviegoers will forget because of its title, but not because of its story or the performances of its lead. I admit that I was skeptical of the title and the trailer because you never really know if a Phoenix movie will be great or terrible these days. But I have trust in director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester). If nothing else, I knew the movie was not going to be f***ing suck (Alex Ovechkin Stanley Cup quote…my team’s average is a combined one win a decade, so I’m going to milk the Washington Capitals championship for a long, long time). And the movie certainly didn’t suck. In fact, people often ask me if I watch movies through the eyes of a fan or of a critic. And more often than not, it goes back and forth, but I feel like I’m always analyzing the movie. However, when a movie is great, the critic’s lens gets taken off, and I’m in it for the ride as much as the persons sitting on my left and right. And that was the case with this movie. I was just really invested in the story and the characters. It reminded me a lot of The End of the Tour, a movie which, admittedly, I enjoyed slightly more than Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. But it had that same sort of vibe with me.

I’ll hit the first issue with this movie right away. Though it isn’t explicitly stated, you start doing the math, and you realize that a 43-year-old Phoenix is trying to portray someone half his age. While it’s not a huge deal, it is enough to bother you. I kept comparing the year of the movie’s setting, the mid-1970s, and how Callahan was born in 1952. And I kept asking myself if we were just supposed to accept a mid 40’s Phoenix as a guy in his early 20’s. If you’re able to get past that, you’ll do alright with this movie. It was hard for me to get past, but it still worked for me. What did work for me was the movie’s theme. Now it was unevenly shot (at times). We go back and forth from present-day 1983-ish, 1972 when a drunk driving car accident left him a paraplegic, and parts in between where Callahan is figuring out how to live his life without being able to move anything below his chest, attending Alcoholic Annonymous meetings, and giving a motivational speech to a group of fellow addicts, following his ability to overcome odds and succeed as a person with a physical disability. It worked mostly, and a lot of that was because Callahan’s speaking lines carried us from one period to the other. But, at the same time, was it needed? Or did it hamper the overall story by forcing the audience to transition to multiple time periods that really weren’t necessary? For me, it worked. But had I not been zeroed in, I might have wondered what was going on.

Though it doesn’t preach it, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot is a movie about the 12-step program for recovering alcoholics. It certainly doesn’t preach it, nor does it force-feed us down our throats, but slowly it reveals itself as the story’s plot. But it also tells the story of a man going through severe depression following the upheaval of his life and what he does with the new set of cards he has been dealt to overcome his circumstances. It isn’t a pretty movie. We feel the depths of despair of what it might be like to be forced to have our lives completely and forever changed due to one bad decision. Much like Joe, the character that Phoenix plays in You Were Never Really Here. We feel John Callahan’s circumstance, pain, and hopelessness. And we are grateful that we are not in the same circumstance. As a raging alcoholic before his accident (John started drinking at the age of 12), recovering physically was extra difficult because of his body’s need for alcohol. One of the duties of his hired help was to bring him enough alcohol each day to sustain him until the next. John is mean to his help and can be rude to anyone else, not unexpected from someone suffering from severe depression. He doesn’t have the resources or the desire to enter treatment, nor does he have any successful outlets to vent his anger.

This changes when John picks up a pen and paper. Though it isn’t easy, he began crafting cartoons. John he had near full functionality in one arm and partial functionality in the other. Through this, he was able to clutch a pen between both hands to create an artistic style that was rugged and somewhat simple but effective when combined with his captions. And these weren’t just any type of cartoons. The subject matter was not at all politically correct. He used lots of black humor, and his ghastly cartoons took shots at the disadvantaged, women, different racial groups…no one was off-limits. And he wasn’t apologetic and often checked himself against random strangers, asking them to read his cartoons and tell him what he thought. He became a very polarizing artist, yet his drawings still ran regularly in publications like The New Yorker, Penthouse, National Lampoon, and dozens of others. By the time of his death, he had been published in more than 200 publications.

But it wasn’t like Callahan picked up a pen a week, a month, or even a year after his accident to begin his new career. He went through a long period of deep depression, and even as he was coming out of it, realizing the life he had was the one he had to live for the rest of his life, and forgiving others, he still could not forgive himself. Phoenix is one of those unique artists who take on the life of the movie…or more the movie takes on the life of him. By this, I mean that he tends to get lost in his roles, which can either greatly enhance a film or derail it. But when he is locked in, few actors can match his restrained recklessness. And he’s also an actor who’s not going to play anywhere close to the same role twice. He takes risks, and, very often, they work out for him. His aloof abrasiveness doesn’t make him the most likable man in Hollywood, but few can deny his unbelievable talent. Phoenix absolutely radiated in this role. He excelled at playing the same character at different portions of his life, the carefree drunk before his accident and the man who has to live with the consequences of one terrible decision afterward.

Matching Phoenix’s performance was a nearly unrecognizable Jonah Hill (The Wolf of Wall Street, Moneyball) as Donnie, a gay alcoholic who runs Alcoholic Annonymous (AA) meetings from his wealthy home that he inherited from his parents. Looking like a blond Jesus, Donnie is a leader and meshes together John and a handful of other abrasive personalities in a unique support group separate from the AA meetings that he runs. But behind those long locks and blue eyes is a powerful man who has his own share of sadness and difficult times. At one point, when he’s talking to John on the phone, he tells him that he gets particularly sad at 4:00 p.m. each day. He doesn’t expand on this, but watching him lounge on his king-sized bed while twirling the ends of his hair lets us know that, yes, he has as much pain in his life as John or any of the others that he sponsors. Nevertheless, he lives by the 12-step program, and it’s actually really refreshing to see his commitment to it and how he tries to win others over with it. The 12-step program itself almost becomes its own character as John tries to get his life back on track.

Also starring in Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot is an underutilized Rooney Mara (Carol, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) as John’s nurse and Jack Black (School of Rock, Shallow Hal) as Dexter, John’s barhopping drinking companion on the night of his accident. Black serves his purpose in the role. He really only on the screen twice, the first as the reckless jackass you’d expect him to be, and then later somebody much different. Mara was fine, but her role probably could have been played by anybody. Sure we needed somebody beautiful and compassionate who was able to be a romantic interest of John’s that made him want to turn his life around, but some lesser actresses could have done this too. I would have rather seen her spend her time in a lead role in a different movie.

This is a really good movie, and it shines through the direction of Van Sant and particularly through Phoenix, who carries this movie in a way in which other actors would have failed. It’s not a feel-good story (Callahan, himself, is the first to say that), but it is a feel-good movie. This is enhanced by the tremendous score provided by Danny Elfman, that’s mostly jazzy and alternates with an uncanny but comfortable feeling orchestra but with alternately eerie and comforting improvising of orchestral instruments. And it all works. Fabulously.

Plot 9/10
Character Development 10/10
Character Chemistry 9/10
Acting 9.5/10
Screenplay 9/10
Directing 8.5/10
Cinematography 9.5/10
Sound 9.5/10
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 9/10
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