The Giving

A wealthy young philanthropist eases his guilty conscience by helping the homeless using reprogrammed automated bank tellers, with not altogether happy results. One of the few movies to even recognize the plight of urban homelessness has too many good ideas camouflaged by too much technical showmanship and self-conscious presentation: portentous confessional monologues; abstract camera tricks; and so forth. The message is sincere (despite the noticeable lack of aggressive panhandlers), but the heavy stylization seems an inappropriate way to confront the harsh realities of deprivation, and the clever solution to the imbalance of wealth has another, never mentioned flaw: generosity is easy when giving away someone else's money. First time director Eames Demetrios should be congratulated for accomplishing miracles on a shoestring budget (the cast includes several homeless non-actors), but the film could have said a lot more if he hadn't been too busy pretending to be Orson Welles.