Overrated and overhyped

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

The main thing that pushed me to finally watch "Affliction" was to check out the Oscar-winning performance by James Coburn. Correct me if I'm wrong, but at the time, this legendary actor scooping up Best Supporting Actor over more the more heavily favored Ed Harris ("The Truman Show") was something of a surprise. Personally, I would've still selected Harris on that ballot, but there can be no doubt that Coburn's skin-crawling turn as an alcoholic, abusive father is also deserving of recognition. He makes this character – who could've been an absolute cartoon – feel completely three-dimensional, and shares a palpable familial chemistry with on-screen son Nick Nolte (also excellent). Coburn's imposing and unpredictable presence ensures the film is infinitely more interesting every time he appears on screen.Director Paul Schrader establishes a believable small town atmosphere in the film's first hour. The snow-coated, winter setting adds an atmosphere of detachment and bleakness entirely fitting to the journey of the main character.However, I'd be lying if I didn't say I found "Affliction" to be an overly slow-paced film, lacking in narrative drive. Even the 'murder mystery' aspect (along with it's "is-that-it?" resolution) does not do much for the plot. There is also heavy-handed and unnecessary voice-over narration. Bizarrely it is delivered by Willem Dafoe, who doesn't show up in the film for quite some time, and when he does, doesn't leave much of an impression. It would've been better to omit the narration altogether.I wouldn't entirely dissuade audiences from checking out "Affliction" – but it is likely to frustrate the mainstream audience expecting more of a murder-mystery thriller. Schrader has opted instead for an introspective character piece, which is certainly going to satisfy some (including, as it happened, the critics, who lavished praise upon this film), but frankly it is going to flat-out bore many viewers.

If you can survive the first twenty minutes, you are as patient (and as dumb/curious)as I. You will not be justly rewarded for the patience. Nolte is a drunk in real life, so does a good job as a reprobate in this movie. All the sappy reviews aside, this movie is a dud, something you might find behind a horse in a parade. This is a two hour movie, 90% was space filler...dead mom, ex-wife, pointless daughter scenes, dysfunctional dad, girlfriend, cemetery scene, etc. The writer should be indicted for wasting our time. Somebody used a software "how to make a movie" application, and this show came out the other end. I watched it for free. Someone owes me for the time spent.

Affliction, written and directed by the great Paul Schrader from a novel by Russell Banks, starts off like a story you've heard a thousand times. Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte) is the sheriff of a small New Hampshire town. He's also a heavy drinker with an ex-wife who can't stand him and a daughter who spends her time pouting and asking to go home to her mother. One day a hunting "accident" leaves a wealthy businessman dead, and Wade sees this as his opportunity to prove his worth to his family, his town and himself. Under the hands of Schrader though, someone who has never taken the safe road as a filmmaker, this small town neo-noir thriller turns into a wrenching study of a deeply disturbed individual.What began as an intriguing mystery instead takes a descent into madness, unraveling this man and exposing the brutality that has long been dormant, waiting underneath the surface for the right circumstances to come about. Whitehouse is subtly picked apart by small disturbances, like a gnawing tooth ache and his ungrateful, unloving daughter, that Schrader intelligently weaves into this building sense of aggression and frustration. By the time his daughter refuses to get a Big Mac because her mother says it's bad for her, the audience is down to their last nerve the same way that Whitehouse is. It's an incredible display of bringing the viewer into the mind of it's main character, which builds to a final act that is shattering and terrifying.Schrader's script is immaculately staged here, the kind of intelligent writing where there isn't a single wasted moment. The first hour of the film is almost all character development, which services everything perfectly. It's all building the sense that things are coming to a dramatic climax, where every path, no matter how large or small, ultimately leads to one destination. As these minor distractions plague on him, Whitehouse continues his investigation into the death, but what takes a more center stage as the film progresses is his chaotic relationship with his father, portrayed by James Coburn. We start to see that it's this father/son dynamic that has made Whitehouse such a disturbed individual, his father being a terrifying bastard of a man who abused him as a child while he drank himself into short-tempered rages.In this dynamic, Affliction starts to become a study of what kind of impact that relationship can have on the development of a person, that can grow inside of him and change the course of who he is to become. Is Whitehouse a bad man at heart, or was he made that way by his father? He seems good when we first meet him, trying his hardest despite his character faults, but as he goes down this descent the audience is left to wonder if the father makes the man, if a different patriarch could have led him down a path much less dark. Coburn is a terrifying force here, a man who makes you uncomfortable from the moment he steps into the room. Even when he's not in a rage, you can feel it in the air, the fear that it can come at any moment. It's a palpable sensation that anyone with a short-tempered father can immediately relate to. Casting this man was a hard task for Schrader, as he had to find someone who could make the intimidating Nick Nolte quake in his boots, and there couldn't have been anyone more suited for the job than Coburn.Nolte's performance likewise is a work of art and takes us so thoroughly down this road to darkness that Whitehouse experiences. He makes you sympathize with him, perhaps even empathize as I most certainly did, which makes his explosion, his unbridled descent all the more wrenching. There's a scene where he lets loose, completely explodes on a tirade about how this town needs him, that is one of the most shockingly chilling moments I've experienced in some time. It leaves you unable to move, a towering display of machismo in the face of potential emasculation. This is what the film boils down to in a lot of ways, the things that make a man and what being a man really means.Interestingly, the story is told from the outside perspective of Whitehouse's brother Rolfe, played by the always great Willem Dafoe. Instead of having the story told through the eyes of Wade, instead we see it all as Rolfe looking back, filled with an eerie sense of remorse that he wasn't able to stop what was coming. Dafoe only appears physically on screen for about ten or fifteen minutes, but you can feel his presence looming over the picture the whole way through, as we occasionally hear him through voice-over. His intriguing voice captures the audience, giving Affliction a troubling, almost poetic neo-noir feel that broods while the characters explode. It's the perfect contrast to the towering work delivered by Schrader and his actors on screen. This is a shattering picture.

A most depressing, soul-sapping film, noteworthy for the earth-shattering clash of two enormous screen presences. In wintry New Hampshire we follow Nolte as Wade, the local sheriff, whose wretched situation we're told by his brother in voice-over, given that Wade is too busy drinking or getting high. Wade has one or two smouldering camp fires of hope in the otherwise ubiquitous snowscape of his world - his girlfriend Margie and the impetus of re-establishing some kind of self-esteem by clearing up a shifty-looking accidental shooting incident.All hope is snuffed out the moment that James Coburn, as his father Glen, appears on screen. Key to the film is that Wade's mother is discovered to have died of hypothermia in the Whitehouse home - that Glen has neglected her sufficiently, as he has the rest of his family, for her snuff out. The film is a study in these metaphors, the extreme danger of the cold and fiery anger and the precious rarity of consistent inter-human warmth. Nolte and Coburn go at each other relentlessly throughout the film, barely ever physically, but in perpetual horns-lock of machismo breast-beating. It's a splendid spectacle but ultimately thoroughly dismal. 4/10