He Never Died

As long as we recognize Lucas is washed up and most TV sucks, we'll all get along fine.
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Malcolm
Posts: 32040
Joined: Fri May 21, 2004 1:04 pm
Location: Minneapolis

He Never Died

Post by Malcolm »

Synopsis:
Henry Rollins (yes, that one) walks around for 80 minutes and utters lines awkwardly. The remaining 10 minutes are spent kicking ass.

Review:
This one is kind of hard to talk about with spoiling ... well, a lot. Henry Rollins plays Jack, an anti-social dude who lives by himself. He ventures outside only to hit up the local diner for tea and vegetarian fare, play bingo at the nearby senior center, and occasionally meet up with a medical intern who delivers wrapped packages to him regularly, which he promptly proceeds to place in his otherwise empty refrigerator. He pays for everything in cash that he draws from a seemingly endless pile of money stashed in a trunk near his bed. One day, his ex calls to tell him their daughter is in town and wasted at the pub and he needs to go pick her up. Things go from there.

Your liking of this flick is going to be based around how much you buy Henry's performance -- and you're either going to call it wooden or relatively well-played. The film takes too long to really get going, so by the time the good parts roll around, you might have checked out. The one thing that might keep you in it is the dialogue. Henry's got some brutally funny moments that are deadpan brilliance. Here's one:
Daughter: When's the last time you were with someone, anyway?
Jack: How old are you?
Daughter: Nineteen.
Jack: So - nineteen years.
He delivers every single one with an expressionless face that would make Buster Keaton proud. Rumours of a prequel TV series. I'm also trying to figure out what genre to put this in. It's not drama, it's not horror, it's not action, it's not a suspense flick, it's not a thriller.

Verdict:
Worth seeing if you can wait for the plot to rev up.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
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