Review
Lee Daniels' followup to the powerful Precious is an atmospheric work of Southern Gothic based on a novel by Pete Dexter. Some might be precious (!) about their favourite books but great films have been made which bear little resemblance to their source material as fans of Dr Strangelove will know. I wouldn't call The Paperboy great but with weightless yawners like Hansel & Gretel and Oz currently clogging the cinema its rawness and energy is like licking an electric fence. In a good way. Grainy saturated and wilfully unfocused The Paperboy is a reminder of the power of 2D.
Matthew McConaughey continues his resurgence tapping into a hitherto hidden vulnerability. He plays Ward Jansen a journalist who arrives in the backofbeyond with his partner Yardley (David Oyelowo). They're in town to write a story about the unlawful conviction of Hilary Van Wetter (John Cusack). To entice him they employ Charlotte (Nicole Kidman fearless) who's in love with Hilary or the idea of Hilary. Finally and centrally there is scared smouldering Jack Jansen played by a very capable Zac Efron.
Jack wants to steal Charlotte away from all this the alligatorgutters and the insufferable heat. Nicole thinks he knows nothing because he's young but one of the films myriad themes is the value of youthful idealism Jack is the only one of the main characters yet to plunge down a rabbithole of hopelessness and selfservice. There is genuine affection on show though of the brotherly kind between Ward and Jack and the motherly kind between Jack and Anita (a subtle and funny Macy Gray further proof of Daniels' aptitude for bringing the best and least showy from musiciansturnedactors).
The film is ramshackle and imperfect but this kind of works. It skitters along with little attention paid to the audience with precise relationships between characters rarely spelled out and chunks of action entirely elided. It's not quite as funny or bleak as the similarly southernfried Killer Joe but I do believe that The Paperboy has a more humanist agenda than William Friedkin's film basically emerging on the side of people broken as they often become.
Like Precious this is a film containing difficult individual scenes and a troubling ambivalence about whether we're investing in a set of real characters or peering at them through museum glass. But there's no doubt when the camera starts rolling that Daniels sets out to challenge his audience. In that respect he has succeeded.