Joe may be a handsome strapping guy who looks like a movie star, but he emanates Loser. He's a guy with no substance and a semi-flat-affect, a guy drawn to the quick fix. He caves to corruption easily. He got sober in prison, and flashes his sobriety chip around looking for congratulations, but visits a bar within days of release, downing a shot, and getting drawn into a possible hookup by a beautiful young woman who comes onto him hard. Joe has two daughters whom he hasn't seen in years, and their mother has denied him custody rights (who can blame her?). His parents (Robert Forster and Jacki Weaver) have already had it with their son, they both gave up on him a long time ago. Forster is particularly wonderful here, his sad-dog face looking at his son's "damage and mayhem," as he calls it, with baffled hurt eyes. He informs Joe that he recently read a book called "Understanding the Narcissistic Personality Disorder," in an attempt to comprehend his son's inability to live a meaningful life. It's strangely touching and sad.
The criminal element in the town is a seething den of snakes, with old colleagues and cronies rising up to collect debts from Joe the instant he is released from prison. Pat Healy plays a full-on psychopath, out to get Joe. Gary Cole plays a police lieutenant who offers Joe an irresistible "carrot": kill someone who needs to be killed and get a revised custody agreement. Nobody plays amoral like Cole. There's a beautifully shot nighttime scene where the two characters sit in the bleachers at a football field, drinking beer, and Cole, staring out at the field, says with sincere regret, "Goddamn, I miss high school." That one line, pathetic and revealing, could describe the interior life of almost everyone in the film. Whatever potential they may have all had vanished a long long time ago. Everything is in the rearview mirror.
The genre elements in "Small Crimes" are very strong: the dark country roads, the sense of evil lurking in the shadows, threatening to engulf innocence. Joe—always hoping for the best in a shallow and delusional way—ignores all the signs. He cannot recognize a Bad Idea. Even his involvement with a hospice nurse (Molly Parker) is suspicious. He is into her, but he also seems to be using her to get to his "mark." Nobody is "clean" though. The way Parker's character talks about being redeemed from past actions, of giving people a second chance, is intriguing. What is she hiding? What are her ghosts?
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