The character's miraculous gift never plays as more than a melodramatic contrivance-it's a gimmick, not an outgrowth of faith. The movie reaches for the heart, but only comes back with a balloon filled with fake blood and chicken livers.
50
Village Voice
Village Voice
Ruffalo has assembled an exceptional cast-to surround writer and star Christopher Thornton, but a script that favors incident over story and direction that crowds scenes instead of letting them breathe make for curiously rough going.
An odd, confusing, ugly and mostly indigestible movie about religious hysteria and rock 'n' roll-two subjects I find about as interesting as opening a tattoo parlor. I wish I liked the movie half as much as I like the actor.
This offbeat effort proves more admirable for its ambition than anything else, as the uneasy mix of satire, allegory, grittiness and redemption never quite jells.
These characters may serve an obscure metaphorical agenda, but they make no psychological sense. And as the movie contemplates the rewards and perils of giving and receiving, it winds itself into stomach-turning knots.