Don't Come Knocking Review

"DON'T COME KNOCKING" reviews

Movie

DON'T COME KNOCKING

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2006-04-21 15:34:04

Provider

Review

You might have thought that the recent Bill Murray vehicle Broken Flowers was the kind of film that you experience but once in a lifetime. If so you'd be wrong, since Wim Wenders' first film in 20 years with Paris, Texas star Sam Shepard is, like Jim Jarmusch's deadpan flick, about a man faced with the possibility of paternity in his twilight years.

Shepard plays film star Howard Spence, a one-time party animal who's run out of steam. Midway through shooting a western, he vanishes into the desert, smashing his cell phone, ripping up his credit cards and boarding a bus to Elko, his childhood hometown. There he visits his widowed mum (Eva Marie Saint), before heading to Butte where he meets waitress Doreen (Jessica Lange), with whom he had a fling on-location fling many years earlier.

In Butte, too, he meets the son, Earl (Gabriel Mann) – a tattooed rock singer who greets his long-lost dad by throwing a wobbly – whom he had by Maureen. Then there is Sky (Sarah Polley), who shows up with a crematorium urn and is convinced that Spence is her dad too.

All of which sounds intriguing – not least the fact that Lange played one of Bill Murray's former lovers in Broken Flowers – but, sadly, this is markedly less than the sum of its parts, despite the stunning cinematography. Not only is it hard to care for Spence's plight but, surprisingly for a director of Wenders' pedigree, the dialogue is loaded with soap opera cliches.