Wake
While the title may suggest otherwise, there's nothing particularly stirring about "Wake", a dysfunctional drama about four bickering brothers who reunite in their boyhood home while their mother lies dying upstairs in bed.
It's not hard to see that first-time director Henry LeRoy Finch was aiming for something along the lines of Sam Shepard or Edward Albee, but the closest he gets to the theatrical world is that his film actually feels like a stagy adaptation of an already contrived play.
Descending upon their humble Bath, Maine, home with plans to end their mother's suffering and/or to search for their dead father's insurance money, Raymond Blake Gibbons), an escaped con with the sideburns to match, the brooding Sebastian (Dihlon McManne), the partying Jack John Winthrop Philbrick) and emotionally fragile baby brother Kyle ("Queer as Folk"'s Gale Harold), face-off in their cluttered living room.
Accusations are leveled, old wounds are reopened, scores are settled and, ultimately, bullets fly. But in the end, all that raging angst, backed by a echoey chorus of disembodied voices from the past, verges into unintended parody.
Things look up a bit on the soundtrack front thanks to the involvement of NPR's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" host Nic Harcourt, who heightens the atmosphere with some rootsy folk-rock selections.
Appearing in two book-ending sequences as a much older Sebastian reflectively tapping his recollections into an old upright typewriter is Oscar winner Martin Landau, whose presence here may be explained by the fact that he happens to be the director's father-in-law and the producer's dad.
It's not hard to see that first-time director Henry LeRoy Finch was aiming for something along the lines of Sam Shepard or Edward Albee, but the closest he gets to the theatrical world is that his film actually feels like a stagy adaptation of an already contrived play.
Descending upon their humble Bath, Maine, home with plans to end their mother's suffering and/or to search for their dead father's insurance money, Raymond Blake Gibbons), an escaped con with the sideburns to match, the brooding Sebastian (Dihlon McManne), the partying Jack John Winthrop Philbrick) and emotionally fragile baby brother Kyle ("Queer as Folk"'s Gale Harold), face-off in their cluttered living room.
Accusations are leveled, old wounds are reopened, scores are settled and, ultimately, bullets fly. But in the end, all that raging angst, backed by a echoey chorus of disembodied voices from the past, verges into unintended parody.
Things look up a bit on the soundtrack front thanks to the involvement of NPR's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" host Nic Harcourt, who heightens the atmosphere with some rootsy folk-rock selections.
Appearing in two book-ending sequences as a much older Sebastian reflectively tapping his recollections into an old upright typewriter is Oscar winner Martin Landau, whose presence here may be explained by the fact that he happens to be the director's father-in-law and the producer's dad.
- 7/9/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Wake
While the title may suggest otherwise, there's nothing particularly stirring about "Wake", a dysfunctional drama about four bickering brothers who reunite in their boyhood home while their mother lies dying upstairs in bed.
It's not hard to see that first-time director Henry LeRoy Finch was aiming for something along the lines of Sam Shepard or Edward Albee, but the closest he gets to the theatrical world is that his film actually feels like a stagy adaptation of an already contrived play.
Descending upon their humble Bath, Maine, home with plans to end their mother's suffering and/or to search for their dead father's insurance money, Raymond Blake Gibbons), an escaped con with the sideburns to match, the brooding Sebastian (Dihlon McManne), the partying Jack John Winthrop Philbrick) and emotionally fragile baby brother Kyle ("Queer as Folk"'s Gale Harold), face-off in their cluttered living room.
Accusations are leveled, old wounds are reopened, scores are settled and, ultimately, bullets fly. But in the end, all that raging angst, backed by a echoey chorus of disembodied voices from the past, verges into unintended parody.
Things look up a bit on the soundtrack front thanks to the involvement of NPR's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" host Nic Harcourt, who heightens the atmosphere with some rootsy folk-rock selections.
Appearing in two book-ending sequences as a much older Sebastian reflectively tapping his recollections into an old upright typewriter is Oscar winner Martin Landau, whose presence here may be explained by the fact that he happens to be the director's father-in-law and the producer's dad.
It's not hard to see that first-time director Henry LeRoy Finch was aiming for something along the lines of Sam Shepard or Edward Albee, but the closest he gets to the theatrical world is that his film actually feels like a stagy adaptation of an already contrived play.
Descending upon their humble Bath, Maine, home with plans to end their mother's suffering and/or to search for their dead father's insurance money, Raymond Blake Gibbons), an escaped con with the sideburns to match, the brooding Sebastian (Dihlon McManne), the partying Jack John Winthrop Philbrick) and emotionally fragile baby brother Kyle ("Queer as Folk"'s Gale Harold), face-off in their cluttered living room.
Accusations are leveled, old wounds are reopened, scores are settled and, ultimately, bullets fly. But in the end, all that raging angst, backed by a echoey chorus of disembodied voices from the past, verges into unintended parody.
Things look up a bit on the soundtrack front thanks to the involvement of NPR's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" host Nic Harcourt, who heightens the atmosphere with some rootsy folk-rock selections.
Appearing in two book-ending sequences as a much older Sebastian reflectively tapping his recollections into an old upright typewriter is Oscar winner Martin Landau, whose presence here may be explained by the fact that he happens to be the director's father-in-law and the producer's dad.
- 5/28/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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