Over-the-top depiction
of ’70s drug scene

Jesus' Son
Rated: No rating
Screens at: 9 p.m. tomorrow, Pearl Highlands;
9 p.m. Nov. 18, MACC Castle Theatre, Maui

By Burl Burlingame
Star-Bulletin

This film is one of seven nominated for HIFF's Golden Maile Award for feature films.

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THERE must be a prayer unique to Method actors: "Oh please, Lord, let me play a naive, innocent junkie."

That means all the strictures of civilized behavior are out with the bath water, that impulse rules, and the audience won't hold it against you because, darn it, it isn't your fault. Drug abusers are handicapped, not stupid.

"Jesus' Son" follows the adventures of a young fellow in the arc of twin addictions, both to drugs and to a chancy romance with another addict. Billy Crudup plays him with angelic sleaze, and Samantha Morton plays her with navel exposed.

The movie is based on a series of short stories by Denis Johnson, and is unashamedly episodic. Some pieces have an amusing hallucinatory creepiness, particularly a knife-in-the-eye stint in a hospital emergency ward.

Most, however, seem to be excuses for well-known actors to drop in for a cameo. "Jesus' Son" is a payday for the likes of Denis Leary, Holly Hunter, Dennis Hopper and others -- they get a couple of days work, get to overact vividly and shamelessly because they only have a scene or two, and they won't get blamed if the movie goes belly up.

The movie is set in the winter alleys of 1970s Midwestern cities. For a new generation of filmmakers, the 1970s represent the same thing the Wild West did for earlier storytellers -- a chance to set characters in a time and place where the rules of everyday life don't apply. They're outside the law.

Well, the '70s wasn't as interesting as these filmmakers think it was. And the Wild West probably wasn't either.

Tech creds for "Jesus' Son" are appropriately chilly. Might have a following among the fashionably grungey.

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