I want to say that I am a big fan of author Cormac McCarthy. I loved his novel “The Road” and thought the film adaptation of the movie was spectacular. It was one of those movies that I went in not knowing what to expect but came out loving it. I read the book after seeing The Road in the theater, and I thought that the book was just as good as the movie. I liked the movie so much that I created a trailer for it. I enjoyed No Country For Old Men, but I certainly didn’t think it was the best movie of 2007. I have yet to read the novel, but I will at some point. I picked up two more of his novels this past year. The first was a book called “Outer Limits,” of which I enjoyed parts. The second was “Child of God,” parts of which I enjoyed. I thought both movies were random and very different from “The Road” and how I would expect “No Country For Old Men” to read. I had heard James Franco (As I Lie Dying, The Sound and the Fury) was directing an adaptation of a McCarthy novel, but I didn’t know it was Child of God until I had finished the book.

I also did not know how many directorial credits Franco had to his name. He is very talented. I sometimes love Franco, and I’m not his biggest fan at others. I thought his performance in 127 Hours was one of the best acting performances I’ve ever seen. I thought he was great in movies like Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Pineapple Express, the Spider-Man movies, and the under-appreciated Annapolis. But then he does movies like This Is the End and The Interview, which I thought were just awful, awful movies. However, Franco can do drama, comedy, and action. He can act, direct, and produce. He is super talented. But I thought he did do justice to Child of God. He made a slightly incoherent book into a movie I enjoyed watching on my couch.

Scott Haze (As I Lay Dying) stars as Lester Ballard, a mentally degenerated and violent man who roams the mountains of Sevier County, Tennessee, in the 1960s. Lester does his own thing when he wants to do it. He’s a recluse. He’s dangerous. The authorities in town know that it isn’t a question of if Lester will do something that will land him in jail but rather a matter of when. It is his goal to live outside social order. And he isn’t very successful in doing so. He has no real ties to the community. He has no parents. He has no home. He lives in the caves or the woods. He carries his rifle with him wherever he goes. Abandoned as a child, Lester is a mentally unstable drifter who maybe never had a chance. But in 1960s Tennessee, that isn’t enough to have him committed.

Lester is a man who is unpredictable at the start of the story, but he delves into sociopathic madness as the film progresses. He transforms from an outsider who sees new interests in other people other than occasionally disrupting their lives to a passive voyeur who spies on people having sex to someone who acts out aggressively to satisfy his needs. The novel is short, but it never felt like a struggle for McCarthy to change his character believably. This was much harder to do for Franco. I think it is always harder to capture something in a movie than in a book. I like to see the film after I read most books, and something that took pages upon pages to describe in a book sometimes gets all of 30 seconds on the screen (if that). But with Franco’s direction, it never seems like his lead character’s descent is a natural progression and that there is nothing that we see that makes us ask the question, “Okay,  how did we get from here to here so quickly?”

Lester is deranged, and his perversions worsen as the movie progresses. Even when Lester tries to show some compassion and do something good (help a woman deserted on the side of the road), the philosophy that no good deed goes unpunished is reinforced (he is falsely accused of raping her). Because of this and other things, Lester becomes angrier and angrier and delves deeper into his perverse, aggressive, and depressive tendencies. When he finds the abandoned dead body of an attractive young woman, he takes the woman home, and she becomes his property. His necrophilia alone is enough to suggest that this man should probably be institutionalized. But, instead, the law wants him off the streets and is doing everything in its power to catch him in a crime. This includes Sheriff Fate (Tim Blake Nelson – Kill the Messenger, Lincoln) and Deputy Cotton (Jim Parrack – Fury, television’s True Blood) hounding Lester and almost goading him to admit to crimes they believe he has committed.

It’s a good adaptation of a lesser-known novel. I think I appreciated the story more after seeing the movie. Part of the problem with the book is that its summary on its back uses the word “humor.” So I kept looking for humor in this movie and found none. It threw off my entire reading because I thought I was missing something. Maybe I was using “humor” as a synonym for “funny.” I don’t know, but there was nothing humorous in the movie, although Lester’s portrayal was more of a comical buffoon than in the book. It was decidedly more natural to tell just how far away from the norms of society he was from the onset of the movie than it was in the film.

Good for you, James Franco, for taking on this movie. I’m not sure if it ever had a chance of box office success. It’s just a lesser-known story than many of McCarthy’s other novels and not as much happens as it does in The Road or No Country For Old Men. Nonetheless, I applaud the effort, and I think he deserved a better rating than the 38% it received on Rotten Tomatoes. I would like to see Franco continue to act and direct in movies that bring out his dramatic side over his comedic side. His comedies don’t do it for me. They feel juvenile and almost insult my intelligence. This Is The End and The Interview are as bad as movies get, and while Pineapple Express had its moments, he’s an actor capable of better roles. I know he’ll forever have his fan base from Freaks and Geeks. I never did watch that show, though one day I might.

Plot 8/10
Character Development 8.5/10
Character Chemistry 8/10
Acting 8.5/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 9/10
Cinematography 9.5/10
Sound 8/10
Hook and Reel 8/10
Universal Relevance 7.5/10
83%

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