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Susan Granger's review of "JESUS' SON" (Lions Gate/Alliance Atlantis)
Adapted from a collection of short stories by Denis Johnson, this episodic, un-rated film was heralded at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals and at the New Directors/New Film Festival in Manhattan. It chronicles the adventures of a slacker who disdains convention and is known only by a nickname that cannot be printed. Let's call him F-H for propriety's sake, acknowledging his uncanny ability to screw things up. As played by Billy Crudup ("Waking the Dead"), F-H is a heroin-using hedonist, a passive loser, who is out for thrills and excitement as he makes his way from Iowa to Phoenix during the counterculture movement of the early 1970s. The title comes from Lou Reed's lyrics to the Velvet Underground song "Heroin," and F-H spends much of his time hallucinating, often within a religious iconography. On his travels, he encounters some pathetic, oddball characters like the derelicts in a farmhouse where he hangs out and gets stoned and a psychopathic emergency-room orderly (Jack Black) with whom F-H pops uppers and downers simultaneously. F-H falls in love with a free-spirited fellow addict (Samantha Morton of "Sweet and Lowdown") until tragedy inevitably occurs. There are subplots/cameos with Holly Hunter, Denis Leary, Will Patton, Greg Germann and Dennis Hopper. Certainly screenwriter Oren Moverman, producer-screenwriters Elizabeth Cuthrell & David Urrutia, and director Alison Maclean ("Crush") aren't afraid to take risks exploring the quietly desperate, black humor in themes of boredom, alienation, death and salvation - all within a $2.5 million budget. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Jesus' Son" is an edgy, detached, fragmented 5, but recommended only if you can tolerate graphic drug use and rambling junkie humor.
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