Directed by Anthony Waller Written by William Davis Starring Devon Sawa, Bill Pullman and Gabrielle Anwar Classification: AA Rating: **
Director Anthony Waller was once a flashy young English director, with the usual background of award-winning commercials (like Ridley Scott, Adrian Lyne and Alan Parker). He earned some attention with 1994's Mute Witness, which, predating the Scream series, was a self-parodying slasher flick taking place on a low-budget movie set. That set him up for the tired and pointless An American Werewolf in Paris.
Now comes The Guilty, a crime drama based on a British TV series by Simon Burke, with Bill Pullman as the hotshot but fatally flawed defence lawyer, Callum Crane, and Devon Sawa as Nathan Corrigan, a petty hood who discovers that he's Crane's son, the product of a one-night stand when Crane was a law student.
The Guilty isn't good enough to be Waller's breakthrough, but there are moments of conspicuously displayed skill in the editing, and enough surprises to make it watchable, at least for the first hour. Waller, who uses the Vancouver setting (including the rain) well throughout, insists on the viewer's attention in the opening sequence, when a young con, Corrigan, gets out of jail and is picked up by a couple of his old buddies.
They are not there to help him change his life for the better. Instead, they promptly go on a wild stolen-truck ride, crash through a fairground (the Pacific National Exhibition grounds) and engage in a shootout with the cops. There's not much narrative point to the sequence, beyond adding a few feet to Waller's résumé reel, but there's no doubt he shows skill.
He pulls out all his effects again a few scenes later when Crane, a hard-drinking narcissist with sociopathic tendencies (for a change, Pullman's characteristic twitches and grimaces make sense in a part), responds to the flirtaciousness of his new secretary, Sophie (Gabrielle Anwar), and, after a bottle of wine, goes back to her apartment. In an instant, the seemingly mild-mannered councillor transforms into a violent rapist. Waller's barrage of effects -- the jump cuts, mirror images, distortions and fade-to-white -- are another display of directorial prowess, an homage to Psycho, no less.
The idea of baby-faced Devon Sawa as a punk is a bit of a stretch (even with the street-cred points he earned from his appearance in Eminem's video for Stan) but he's at ease in the part.
And there's a promising symmetry to the turn of events. The miscreant father, whose crime may ruin his career, meets the young hoodlum in what he thinks is a chance encounter. Before the kid can tell him he's his son, the lawyer hires the kid to do some dirty work for him.
The coincidences begin to stack up precariously when Nathan befriends the roommate of Sophie, not knowing his father wants her out of the way. The subplots also begin to multiply alarmingly. A cartoonish trio of evil debt collectors, (including a blind loan shark who likes to play Roy Orbison to terrify his debtors) are brought in to expedite a few plot points; Crane's well-kept wife (Joanne Whalley in a wasted role) has a subplot of her own.
Just about the point the movie should start to tie things up, the characters finds about another 20 minutes worth of complications. A few glitters of tinsel in the dustbin are eye-catching here, but The Guilty is just too, too much of a mediocre thing.
Liam Lacey