Detachment
Starring: Adrien Brody, Marcia GayHarden, James Caan, Christina Hendricks
Director: Tony Kaye
Rating: 4/5
Director Tony Kaye made his big screen directorial debut with American History X back in 1999 and this week he is back with his new movie Detachment.
It is his first directorial outing since Black Water Transit three years ago but he has delivered a movie that it both amusing and depressing all at the same time.
Adrien Brody stars as Henry Barthes, an educator with a true talent to connect with his students.
Yet Henry has chosen to bury his gift. By spending his days as a substitute teacher, he conveniently avoids any emotional connections by never staying anywhere long enough to form an attachment to either students or colleagues.
When a new assignment places him at a public school where a frustrated, burned-out administration has created an apathetic student body, Henry soon becomes a role model to the disaffected youth.
In finding an unlikely emotional connection to the students, teachers, and a runaway teen he takes in from the streets, Henry realizes that he’s not alone in his life and death struggle to find beauty in a seemingly vicious and loveless world.
Adrien Brody is a fantastic actor and he always seems to pick interesting and intriguing movie projects... and this is no different.
He delivers a great performance as Henry, a man who is just as lost and just as haunted as the students around him.
While he does bury the gift of connecting with students that he has he is a man who is driven by wanting to make them better and prepare them for life.
Yet he is an emotionally conflicted character who is haunted by his past and struggling with things in his personal life in the present.
But it is his bond with teenage prostitute Erica, played by Sami Gayle, that is the most interesting and touching relationship in the movie.
His desire to the help the young sees him take her in and give her a safe place to say but his inability to let people into his life sees him push her away.
It's a great performance from Brody as he goes through a range of emotions in the movie from sadness and disappointment to happiness and laughter.
Detachment is an intriguing movie of teachers who are at their wits end trying to educate the next generation and a bunch of kids who are just disillusioned and lost.
It is a movie that grips you from the very beginning as it highlights, albeit in a fictional story, with a very real problem.
Detachment is engrossing and sharply written and has a talented group of actor deliver great performances.
Detachment is out now
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Adrien Brody