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Michael Pitt isn’t a pretty boy — he just played one on TV (Dawson’s Creek). If you look at him for awhile, you’ll realize his soft features — baby cheeks, pouty lips, a button nose — might look great on their own, but they don’t add up to movie-star dreaminess. Maybe that’s why he was so comfortable (and believable) letting bits of Kurt Cobain iconography obscure them in Last Days.
The film that afforded me the time to figure this out is Jailbait, a grim prison picture with an unaccountably punny title. It follows the early days of incarceration of Randy (Pitt), a nonviolent three-strikes victim taken under the wing of his lifer cellmate Jake (Stephen Adly Giurgis). That’s all there is to it; the movie has about five scenes. Randy, in the grand tradition of Pitt characters, isn’t much of a talker, which suits Jake just fine, and the audience less so. Jake’s monologues, as overwritten by writer-director Brett C. Leonard and inflected by Giurgis, sound like Kevin Smith without the jokes on both counts. The ensuing psychological conflict between the two men, with its overtones of equally menacing sex and violence, is less drawn than drawn-out. The actors actually do well in making these few lengthy scenes go by quickly, but they’re only killing time.
This might’ve all worked as a play, though it’s telling that the most affecting performance in this two-ish character piece is Laila Robbins’ single scene as Randy’s mother, who visits him in prison. Jailbait intends to tell you about the misery, desperation, and futility of our prison system. This is the sort of the situation where you might find a book more useful.
Opens July 14
The film that afforded me the time to figure this out is Jailbait, a grim prison picture with an unaccountably punny title. It follows the early days of incarceration of Randy (Pitt), a nonviolent three-strikes victim taken under the wing of his lifer cellmate Jake (Stephen Adly Giurgis). That’s all there is to it; the movie has about five scenes. Randy, in the grand tradition of Pitt characters, isn’t much of a talker, which suits Jake just fine, and the audience less so. Jake’s monologues, as overwritten by writer-director Brett C. Leonard and inflected by Giurgis, sound like Kevin Smith without the jokes on both counts. The ensuing psychological conflict between the two men, with its overtones of equally menacing sex and violence, is less drawn than drawn-out. The actors actually do well in making these few lengthy scenes go by quickly, but they’re only killing time.
This might’ve all worked as a play, though it’s telling that the most affecting performance in this two-ish character piece is Laila Robbins’ single scene as Randy’s mother, who visits him in prison. Jailbait intends to tell you about the misery, desperation, and futility of our prison system. This is the sort of the situation where you might find a book more useful.
Opens July 14
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