Review: Don’t Come Knocking

Sam Shepard stars as a long-time cowboy actor and notorious long-time hell-raiser, who walks off the set of his latest B-film. He’s headed home to see his estranged mother (Eva Marie Saint) he hasn’t spoken to in years. Meanwhile, the film company sends a guy played by Tim Roth to bring him back to the set ASAP. He may be a detective, bounty hunter, insurance agent, figment of your imagination- take your pick. However, Shepard is more interested in tracking down a former flame (Jessica Lange), whom his mother said called for him decades ago…and pregnant. He finally meets up with her in Butte, Montana to find her running a restaurant. Gabriel Mann is the local crooner (somewhere in between Roy Orbison and Nick Cave, but crap) who is clearly Shepard’s son, and may be going down a similar wrong path as his father. Unfortunately, the surly young man doesn’t take kindly to the sudden appearance of his father after all these years, let alone interfering in his life. Meanwhile, Sarah Polley plays a screenwriter’s construct…er…a young woman in Montana to collect and scatter her recently deceased mother’s ashes, and she clearly has a connection to Shepard as well. George Kennedy plays a film director, Fairuza Balk pretty much plays her usual self as Mann’s trashy girlfriend, Tim Matheson and Kurt Fuller play Hollywood execs, and James Gammon has a brief but memorable cameo as an old cowpoke.

 

I have the distinct impression that to enjoy this 2005 Wim Wenders (“Paris, Texas”, “Wings of Desire”) film scripted by and starring Sam Shepard, one need to be familiar with their earlier effort “Paris, Texas”. From what I’ve read, though, even fans of that film (Which I’ve not seen) are divided on this one. For me, well-cast Shepard’s performance is strong and the cinematography/scenery is nice, but this is full of needless and aimless eccentricities that are off-putting in what is, when you get down to it, a story that should’ve been pretty relatable. Well, except for the part about making westerns. I mean, how many westerns get made at all these days? Very few, to be charitable. Great shot composition from cinematographer Franz Lustig (“Land of Plenty”) and a cool blues/rock score by T-Bone Burnett (“Walk the Line”) aren’t enough to make this one work.

 

The character played by Sarah Polley is also a horribly written cliché that I frankly became impatient with, much like the film itself. Not only is it obvious who she is from her very first scene, but when it’s finally revealed, it’s so half-arsed that I honestly didn’t recall it happening and had to rewind the film. It’s pretty poorly botched if you ask me and for the most part she comes across like an irritating and nosy Yoda who seems to know everything and want to get involved in everyone’s life, whether they like it or not. I also have to single out Gabriel Mann for a genuinely terrible performance. He’s so amateurish that during one scene with Jessica Lange I was wondering if they were making the dialogue up on the spot. I’ve always thought that Lange gives the same drunk Blanche DuBois performance in every film, but here she might actually have been inebriated. However, it was nice to see Eva Marie Saint on screen and she steals her every scene, which sadly isn’t enough. I also thought the great George Kennedy was thoroughly wasted in a nothing role, and Tim Roth plays a truly idiotic and ill-advised character. He’s a source of annoyance in his every scene, never once convincing as a real person, at least not someone who should be in this film. I mean, if he’s not someone in law enforcement, why does he have handcuffs and act like an FBI agent? The scene where Gabriel Mann flips out and throws all of his furniture out into the street definitely shouldn’t be here. It’s jarringly over-the-top.

 

There’s something here about this father-son relationship (clichéd or not), but Shepard and Wenders foul it all up by trying to be different. Yes, there’s a lot of clichés here, but if done straight and without all of this other stuff, the film certainly would’ve been a bit better than it is. Such a waste of an excellent cast, this one just didn’t work for me. Sam Shepard is well-cast and the film looks great, but it’s clichéd, needlessly weird, and pretty aimless.

 

Rating: C