The Violent Heart: A young adult film-noir-in-training buried deep in mundanities
By Thom Ernst
Rating: C-plus
The Violent Heart lies somewhere between a chasm that divides soft-peddled melodrama and Young Adult fiction. It's unlikely director/writer Kerem Sanga intended the story to be categorized as either melodramatic or Young Adult.
But what The Violent Heart aspires to is at odds with what it is capable of achieving. There are some great performances here by Lukas Haas, Mary J. Blige, Jovan Adepo and Grace Van Patten, but the strength of their efforts is helpless against a script that plods towards its preposterous conclusion.
Grace Van Patten and Jovan Adepo add star-crossed lovers to the murder mystery stew.
The story begins on a high note. It’s a suitably serene slice of life-moment when 9-year-old Daniel (Jordan Preston Carter) and his family are reunited with the return of his father (Cress Williams), a career Marine, on leave from his station in Afghanistan.
Later that same night, Daniel sees his sister, Wendy (Rayven Symone Ferrell), sneak off, suitcase-in-hand into a waiting car. Daniel follows on a motorized minibike (a distracting enough bit of business that sets me off daydreaming about how cool it would be to nine and have access to a motorized minibike). Daniel finds the car pulled off to the side of the road. He hears Wendy scream, then a gunshot. He wanders into the woods, trips, and falls next to the body of his dying sister. The boy doesn't see the killer. But the sight of Wendy in her last throes of life is embedded in his psyche forever.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
It's a promising start, but it's a prelude to a story that is shoved aside far enough to seem forgotten. And the promise the opening scene makes doesn't quite materialize. The rest of the film is burdened with forced plot devices (the minibike being one) to connect this first scene with the last.
The film jumps fifteen years ahead. The boy is now a man (Jovan Adepo) working as a mechanic in a local garage. He's quiet and sullen, emotionally distant, and driven by a desire to join the Marines.
But Daniel's dark past threatens to get in the way. Then he meets Cassie (Van Patten), an 18-year-old high school student grown well beyond her peers. Cassie is confident, bright, and well-liked, but prefers her English teacher's company over the attention she gets from the football team captain.
That her English teacher is also her father (Haas) is, well, another forced plot device.
Cassie and Daniel form an unlikely romance. There are enough Shakespeare quotes throughout the film to plant the seeds of misgiving that this meeting of star-crossed lovers might not wrap up with a fairy tale ending. Their love-affair plays out with the kind of cute back-and-forth banter designed to disarm the audience with their causal charm.
Adepo and Van Patten deliver their lines with unblemished fluency to the point of perfection. But their style conveys an off-handed quaintness fresh from the Gilmore Girls school of acting.
It's peculiar when the choices taken are undoubtedly correct but ultimately ring false. And the film's vague suggestion that Cassie is spurred on as a way of striking out against her father is never confirmed. Ambiguous intents can work well in a script, but in this case, not knowing Cassie's true motivation gets in the way of trusting her decisions.
Cassie's parents object to the relationship because Daniel is a "bad guy." Which leaves us to question just how small is this small town? Small enough to know that Daniel is a "bad guy" but big enough that a killer can drive their car to a murder scene and not worry about detection.
Despite flashbacks and abundant exposition, not enough is known about any of the characters to incite the emotional investment needed to make the ending work. Particularly sparse is Cassie's mother's character (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), whose fragility and willful ignorance are not fully understood. And yet, she is, in ways that are left unanswered, the film's most interesting character.
I suppose there is meaning lurking here about self-perpetuating failure based on past trauma and the scars left by an act of violence. In that case, that message is buried deep in mundane issues about teenage dating, infidelity, and a mystery that seems forgotten.
But by the time The Violent Heart reveals itself to be nothing more than a film-noir-in-training, it's already too late to pull away. The film has a hook. And as much as you might struggle to break free, you're likely there until the end.
Not that The Violent Heart builds towards any notable conclusion, nor does it pose questions that demand answers. It simply stokes enough curiosity that to turn away would feel akin to opening a box without bothering to look inside. And though there is nothing too grand or surprising to discover, it does warrant a polite nod before forgetting it entirely.
The Violent Heart is directed by Kerem Sanga and stars Lukas Haas, Mary J. Bige, Jovan Adepo, Grace Van Patten and Kimberly Williams-Paisley. The Violent Heart is currently available on VOD.