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THE DEVIL HAS A NAME
Director: Edward James Olmos Cast: David Strathairn, Kate Bosworth, Pablo Schreiber, Edward James Olmos, Haley Joel Osment, Martin Sheen, Alfred Molina, Katie Aselton MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:37 Release Date: 10/16/20 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 15, 2020 Caught somewhere between a dark satire and a serious critique, The Devil Has a Name is a tonally confused examination of corporate malfeasance. It marks the return of Edward James Olmos as a director, and while he—along with screenwriter Robert McEveety—has a lot to say about greed and environmental devastation on a large and mostly covered-up scale, the message is overshadowed by some odd characters, a shaky narrative, and humor that doesn't match the severity of the point being made. The central conflict revolves around patch of land in California. Fred (David Strathairn) farms nuts there, as he has done for decades. Gigi (Kate Bosworth) is an executive at a Texas-based oil company, which wants to buy the rights to part of his farm—well, the air pockets within the soil of that land. As we quickly learn, a company drilling operation nearby has started polluting the soil. If Fred sells, there's nothing he can do against the company, which will continue to drill and pollute without consequences. That's pretty straightforward, as is the court case that eventually unfolds, with Fred hiring Ralph Wegis (Martin Sheen), a high-profile lawyer who's famous for his idealism and killing the Ford Pinto. While that unfolds, Gigi fights for her job and her corporate influence against a mysterious man (played by Pablo Schreiber), sent by the headquarters in Houston to intimidate and maybe do worse to Fred and anyone else who gets in the way of the company's business interests. Fred's case is played with relative sincerity (some courtroom shenanigans and the lawyer's urgency to use the restroom notwithstanding). The business with the devious and generally sociopathic oil folks is played as a murkily comic thriller of sorts—a battle between liars and ill-doers trying to connive, threaten, and manipulate each other into defeat. The movie certainly makes its point about the ruthless nature of these people and their industry, even if it means leaving us with tonal whiplash. The whole affair becomes an extended battle—both within the story and in terms of how the movie tells its story—between sincerity (Along with Sheen's character, Olmos plays the farm's foreman and Fred's social conscience) and cynicism. By the time it reaches a shallowly simple and morally contradictory ending, The Devil Has a Name doesn't seem able to tell the difference anymore. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for
language, some sexual material and drug use, and brief violence)
