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TONE-DEAF
Director: Richard Bates Jr. Cast: Amanda Crew, Robert Patrick, Kim Delaney, Hayley Marie Norman, Johnny Pemberton, Nancy Linehan Charles, AnnaLynne McCord, Tate Ellington, Ray Santiago, Ray Wise MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:27 Release Date: 8/23/19 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 22, 2019 There's the potential for a neat thriller in Tone-Deaf, as a younger woman rents the house of an older man who has decided that he's going to kill someone while he still has the chance. Some of that is here in writer/director Richard Bates Jr.'s movie, which is primarily a heavy-handed and not-particularly-funny comedy about the generational divide between Millennials and Baby Boomers—with plenty of grisly murder tossed into the mix. Bates' approach appears to be in the both-sides-are-wrong vein, as Olive (Amanda Crew) can't even keep her life in order and Harvey (Robert Patrick) is, well, a complete psychopath. If one wonders which position Bates ultimately might side, the answer likely is in those descriptions. Basically, Olive loses her boyfriend and her job in one day, and on the advice of her mother (played by Kim Delaney), who has abandoned civilization to live in a commune, she decides to leave Los Angeles for the weekend. The house she finds to rent online belongs to Harvey, a recent widower. His introductory scene climaxes with Harvey staring directly at the camera, insulting the younger members of the audience as spoiled, entitled, lazy, and unappreciative of his generation's hard work and sacrifice. There's no subtlety to Bates' screenplay (except, perhaps, the way that everyone takes a pause before lying about Olive's piano-playing skills, which is an amusing running joke). Olive lies around the house, goes looking for a sexual hook-up and some drugs, and has vivid visions of her father (played by Ray Wise), who committed suicide when she was a girl. Harvey stalks her and finds some other targets to warm up his murderous impulses before going after Olive. He rants some more, sometimes to the camera again, in between the killings. Beyond Bates' obvious approach, the central problem is pretty foundational: Harvey is too extreme a character to be representative of anything but a generic psychopathic murderer. This is, of course, the final point of the generational warfare, which becomes painfully apparent when it's Olive's turn to offer her own blood-soaked rant (She's otherwise completely harmless—oblivious and hapless, but not a murderer). Because of the nature of Harvey's character, we've figured that out well before then. In going off the deep end with his satirical method throughout Tone-Deaf, Bates beats himself to the punch line. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for violence, language throughout, sexual content and some drug use)
