MOVIE REVIEW : Family Problems Run Out of Control in ‘Hearts’

There are lots of weird families in the movies, but few outside of the Addams Family are as severely off-kilter as the Warrens in “Crooked Hearts.” What gives the film (AMC Century 14) its distinction is that, at first glimpse, they appear to have the kind of heartland heartiness that practically defines what it means to be All-American.

Tom (Peter Berg) has the square-jawed handsomeness of a small-town quarterback. Charley (Vincent D’Onofrio), the womanizing big brother of the family, has a homey, dilapidated ranginess. Ask, the kid brother (Noah Wyle), is like the family mascot--he’s the “sensitive” one. Cassie (Juliette Lewis), is a sleepy-headed teen-ager who casts a disbelieving eye on her siblings while still relishing her role in the menagerie. The father, Peter Coyote’s Edward, has a gangly affability, like a more homespun Ward Cleaver; his wife (Cindy Pickett) would not look out of place as the matriarch in “Lassie.”

But look again. Tom, for example, has just dropped out of Berkeley and returned home to his family in Tacoma, whereupon his father throws one of his ritualistic parties, complete with streamers, to christen yet another family debacle.

Charley’s womanizing turns out to have its ugly side, and he likes to play with matches. Nasty little family secrets crop up like crocuses, and the nastiest belongs to Edward.

It’s a potpourri of family pathology, like something out of O’Neill crossed with Pat Conroy, but first-time writer-director Michael Bortman doesn’t dress his drama in American Gothic duds. It’s all very straightforward, much like the homey sitcoms it superficially resembles, and that gives the movie a chilling undertone.

The 1987 novel by Robert Boswell that Bortman adapted had a similar folksy grotesqueness. In broadening the range of family conflicts, the film turns into a free-for-all without a true center.

Tom is the voice-over narrator, but everyone in the family moves in and out of the spotlight. The pile-up of pathology turns out to be both too much and not enough. There’s too much to sort out and not enough to chew on, and sometimes it’s easier just to tune out.

Charley’s aberrant behavior is the plot’s engine, but the filmmakers never tinker with it. D’Onofrio has enough dark depths as an actor that what probably was meant to be a portrait of a fundamentally decent but misunderstood kid turns into a species of psycho.

But the movie (rated R for language and brief nudity) never descends to Charley’s basest instincts; he’s still portrayed as essentially harmless even when we’ve gone way past regarding him in that way.

And Coyote has the reverse problem: He’s so resolutely guileless that no dark depths ever come to light, and without those depths his function as the “real” villain of the piece doesn’t make emotional sense.

But there are always sharp details and screw-loose moments to pull you back in. As Ask, Wyle has an appealingly awe-struck innocence. He doesn’t have to play up this quality; it seems to emanate from him naturally.

Berg gives a more shaded and emotionally complicated performance than you might at first expect from him; his mumbly, hurt quality comes through best in his moments with Jennifer Jason Leigh, playing his girlfriend with her own history of family abuse.

Leigh’s character straightens out too quickly but, in her early scenes, she has an edgy volatility that’s convincingly scary. Her scruffiness is a form of armor. Bortman has a rather flat-footed visual sense, but he knows actors, and that results in some of the film’s finest moments. Even Coyote comes through near the end with a heartbreakingly stricken close-up.

“Crooked Hearts” is just good enough that you wish it were better. Bortman attempts to undercut the All-American homilies of home and hearth but on some level he still keys into those homilies.

In his dilemma, he probably speaks for many of us in the audience, but he doesn’t really dramatize that dilemma. The hurt in this movie runs too deep for its homespun, let-bygones-be-bygones resolution. But at least we feel the hurt.

‘Crooked Hearts’

Vincent D’Onofrio: Charley

Jennifer Jason Leigh: Marriet

Peter Berg: Tom

A Metro Goldwyn Mayer presentation of an A&M; Films production. Director Michael Bortman. Producers Rick Stevenson, Dale Pollock and Gil Friesen. Screenplay Michael Bortman, based on the novel by Robert Boswell. Cinematographer Tak Fujimoto. Editor Richard Francis-Bruce. Costumes Susan deLaval. Music Mark Isham. Production design David Brisbin. Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (language, nudity).