I came across this film from a review by Roger Ebert. I have grown to respect his opinions most of the time. It was also a big motivator to check out to see Christian Bale and John Hurt on screen together. I'm a fan of both of them. The film starts out well with a good introductory to Bale's character caring for his mouse which he must keep hidden from his step father. However the second the step father appears and comes across as a James Bond villain or Darth Vader, especially with the over bearing music, I began to get concerned. Evil step father's are often poorly portrayed in films and are over the top but this one takes the cake. It was just ridiculous. Pretty much every character was over the top and felt over exaggerated. You could make a drinking game off of how many times Bale cries in this film. It just seemed the director was stereotyping mentally challenged people as crying a lot. Even John Hurt, arguably one of the best Shakespearean actors of all time, looks weak in this film. Of course it isn't the actors faults. We all know that Bale and Hurt are amazing talents. It's clearly the fault of an inexperienced director who definitely has not learned the art of subtlety. The concept was interesting and could have lead to a good story in the right hands. In these hands though the narrative is unfocused and poses to be meaningful but in the end isn't. There are plot points that come up that are out of place and have no real point in the film. Towards the end of the film, the whole thing goes off of the deep end. We go into pure fantasy with the step father turning into the equivalent of a comic book super villain. He apparently has the strength of a few men, is unfazed by injury, and can punch through glass windows. It was just so ridiculous. There are so many directions this film could have gone in and they took the worst route imaginable. I really have nothing good to say about this movie other then that Christian Bale and John Hurt did an okay job given that they clearly had nothing to work with. Though it's interesting to look at Bale's performance in this and lay it beside his eerily comedic role in American Psycho, which came out only a year later. If you look at both performances side by side you can see that Bale has an incredible range.
