BEFORE: Sam Rockwell carries over from last night's film...I always like Sam Rockwell's performances, he just usually seems very believable to me somehow, no matter what type of character he's playing. I like these chameleon-type actors. He's on the big screen right now in "Iron Man 2", but so far in the countdown I've seen him in "Moon", "Frost/Nixon", "Safe Men", "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", and "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford".
THE PLOT: A sex-addicted con-man pays for his mother's hospital bills by playing on the sympathies of those who rescue him from choking to death.
AFTER: OK, maybe this can be my Mother's Day movie, a couple of days late. Sam Rockwell's character may do a lot of bad things, but he does take care of his mother, even though she doesn't always recognize him when he comes to visit.
This is based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, who also wrote "Fight Club", which was an even more messed-up movie, but in a good way. Instead of underground fistfights, Victor Mancini gets his thrills from sex - no-commitment, occasionally anonymous sex with strangers, co-workers (he works at one of those Colonial re-enactment sites) and most of the nurses in his mother's hospital ward. He even has hook-ups during his sex-addiction group meetings.
Victor was raised part-time by his mother, who was a con artist, or possibly demented, and by a series of foster parents while his mother was doing time. So is that what made him a sex addict? The implication is that he pretends to choke in restaurants for attention and the momentary human contact it brings - but I'm not sure it's a direct line between parental neglect and sex addiction. Maybe it's an Oedipal thing, maybe not.
My own upbringing was quite the opposite - I wasn't allowed to play sports or go to camp, because my mother always envisioned the worst-case scenarios that could happen. If I played sports, I would no doubt have broken my arm, or at least my glasses. And camp? In her mind, I would have either drowned in a lake or been eaten by a bear, I suppose. Yes, my Mom put the "Mother" in "smother", but I restrained myself from adding the extra "S" to her Mother's Day card this year.
Either way, you can't win. Just accept that your kid's probably going to be screwed up - after all, I think sanity is overrated, and there are just 5 billion different forms of disfunction in the world.
Not to quibble, but wouldn't it make more sense for Victor to sue the restaurants he pretends to choke in? I mean, if his goal is to raise money, wouldn't that be more profitable? A restaurant would probably give him cash just to settle a lawsuit and get rid of him. And if someone gave him the Heimlich maneuver and saved his life, wouldn't he be indebted to them, rather than the other way around? I'm just sayin'...
Also starring Anjelica Huston and Joel Grey.
RATING: 4 out of 10 powdered wigs
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