Review: The Forger

John Travolta plays a forger who makes a deal with the devil (a Boston mob guy played by Anson Mount) to get an early release from prison so that he can spend time with his terminally ill son (Tye Sheridan), who has inoperable brain cancer. Mount in return asks for Travolta to ply his usual trade to forge a Monet painting and perform a heist to swap it with the real thing so that Mount can make his Latino mobster crony happy. Travolta, by the way, is currently living with his elderly veteran pickpocket father (Christopher Plummer) who has been raising the boy. Travolta is also being watched by the authorities (one played by Abigail Spencer) who want to nab Mount. Jennifer Ehle turns up briefly as the boy’s estranged birth mother.

I had heard some pretty poor things about this 2016 heist movie meets fathers-and-sons flick by director Philip Martin (a director of mostly British TV) and screenwriter Richard D'Ovidio (similarly not-bad genre films like “Exit Wounds” and “The Call”). However, as lumpy as it is…it almost works. Almost isn’t good enough but I still came away from it a little more satisfied than I expected.

I’ve never considered John Travolta a terribly good actor, but when he’s not overdoing it as a bad guy, he can give off a decent, well-meaning vibe. Scientologist or not, I get the feeling that it’s partly because he’s a genuinely decent human being. It’s a quality that is essential to playing a ne’er do well like the one he plays here, and his own experiences as a grieving parent may also have given him a little insight into the character he plays here as well (Pure speculation on my part, of course). The character is an ex-con, but Travolta is likeable and therefore imbues the character with likeability and innate decency. His sincerity takes the film a fair way on its own. Christopher Plummer isn’t given a terribly interesting role here but he steals his every scene and looks to be having a lot of foul-mouthed fun. He’s terrific, and in my view one of the most underrated and consistently good actors in cinematic history. Young Tye Sheridan has never been my favourite actor, he’s always come across as glum and somewhat reluctant to be in front of a camera to me. Here though, he gives easily his best performance that I’ve seen to date. He also looks like he could pass for Travolta’s kid and is effective playing the son of an ex-con.

I was less enamoured with Anson Mount as essentially the film’s villain, he puts on the worst Boston accent in a film full of not terribly good ones. It’s really, really bad. Jennifer Ehle plays a cliché out of every movie about a kid who doesn’t know his mother, and does nothing out of the ordinary with it. She also makes an horrendous mess out of her accent as well. As for Abigail Spencer, she has a certain something about her, but that something isn’t a role worth a damn here. It’s a very clichéd part that she’s not really able to break out of.

A lot of people will outright reject the rather gooey and unlikely premise. Other people will just go with it. It’s that kind of film. For me I was pretty much in the middle, I appreciated the intentions and some of the performances, but it probably does try to be too many things at once. However, the only thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was the ridiculous idea that recently released Travolta would be allowed to live with his veteran ex-con/pickpocket father. That I didn’t buy at all, and along with the rather uninteresting cop and estranged mother characters, bring this one down a bit for me just a tad.

Although it’s a bit lumpy and features a few rather clichéd and uninteresting characters, there’s still enough to like here to make it at least watchable. The trio of Travolta, Sheridan, and Plummer shine. Although not worthy of a whole-hearted recommendation, this one’s nowhere near as bad as I had heard. Shoddy Boston accents, though.

Rating: C+