What a year for Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line, Her) will 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. The highly anticipated The Sisters Brothers (fall release) has also received 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 was skeptical of the title and the trailer because you never know if a Phoenix movie will be great or terrible. But I trust director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester). I felt 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 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-40s Phoenix as a guy in his early 20s. You’ll do alright with this movie if you can get past that. It was hard 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 as a person with paraplegia, 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 mainly worked, 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 periods that weren’t necessary? For me, it worked. But had I not been zeroed in, I might have wondered what was happening.
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 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 wrong decision. Much like Joe, the character that Phoenix plays in You Were Never Really Here. We feel John Callahan’s circumstances, 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), physically recovering was extra tricky 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, which is not unexpected for 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.
Things change when John picks up a pen and paper. Though it wasn’t easy, he began crafting cartoons. John 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, and different racial groups. 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 his death, he had been published in more than 200 publications.
But Callahan didn’t pick 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 his life. By this, I mean he tends to get lost in his roles, which can greatly enhance or derail a film. But when he is locked in, few actors can match his restrained recklessness. And he’s known for taking on uniquely identifiable characters with each role. 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 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 John and a handful of other abrasive personalities together 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 challenging 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 he has as much pain in his life as John or any of the others he sponsors. Nevertheless, he lives by the 12-step program, and it’s refreshing to see his commitment to it and how he tries to win others over with it. The 12-step program 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’s 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 anybody could have played her role. Sure, we needed somebody beautiful and compassionate who could be a romantic interest in John’s life, which 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.
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot is a really good movie, and it shines through the direction of Van Sant and mainly through Phoenix, who carries this movie in a way 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. Enhancing it is the tremendous score provided by Danny Elfman. It is mainly jazzy and alternates with an uncanny but comfortable feeling orchestra but alternately eerie and comforting improvising of orchestral instruments. 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
92%
A-
Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie
- Honey Boy
- My Left Foot
- You Were Never Really Here
- The End of the Tour
- I’m Still Here