CHARACTER ACTOR STEPS OUT OF BOX

CAMERA LENS CREATES MULTIDIMENSIONAL STORY

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Mark Wahlberg performs the many faces of a dreamer from small town America in Father Stu (2022)

In the true to life tragic story of Stuart Long from Helena, Montana, Wahlberg spends more time falling down than getting up, befitting his character’s first effort to find fame and glory as a professional boxer.

Mel Gibson costars as the tough gritty no-nonsense father teaching his child to survive and get by in an economically unjust America.

Jacki Weaver plays the mother begrudgingly giving her son unconditional love despite some obvious mistakes in life choices.

Wahlberg moves out of the box of his screen character actor persona, moving away from the assertive action star to create the hopeful small town dreamer.

Long’s misfortune always seems greater than his success though, even when being led toward God by the love of his life.

Director Rosalind Ross shows off a bit of film art and technical expertise in her directorial debut.

The linear narrative is only sparingly interrupted by the protagonist’s moments of reflection. And the scenes are well composed with many scenes presented through the director’s camera lens as three dimensional.

A score is used over many scenes, but the interesting dialogue drives the narrative as much as the exasperation created in the long wait for the eventual anticipatory successes of the protagonist.

The 2 hour and 4 minute runtime is well used with a realistic treatment of movie time without relying on time fraud.

Ross shows the characters as they are, as members of rural America trying to get by.

The story and all the narrative devices are kept just complicated enough not to be considered too simple, with the draw often being the twists in the story but also the acting.

The film has some self referential moments when Stu decides he wants to be an actor, and first his father and then his mother and then Hollywood try to talk him out of the career change.

Gibson is a kind of ornery father figure that has difficulty living with his own much limited life as a construction site machine operator living in a trailer park. But Bill Long only shows up in the script to kick his son down a bit or pick him up off the ground when Stu has predictably fallen down all on his own.

Weaver has more of a recurring role as a naysayer and disbeliever who is more closely following Stu’s struggles as the better bonded parent in the role of small town single mother with a drifting son.

Teresa Ruiz plays the love interested, Carmen, limited by her Catholic faith. Stu though finds her compelling enough to follow her into church and sit in on her Sunday school classes presented to the congregation’s children.

Wahlberg also goes through several physical transformations for the film, eventually becoming almost unrecognizable in one scene from that of the film persona more commonly known to movie audiences.

Wahlberg produces the film and turns the snapshot of Americana into a slightly better production all around than his previous effort in Joe Bell (2020).

Father Stu is streaming on AppleTV.