Top

film

Stories

 

Detachment

A A A Comments (0) By Mark Holcomb Wednesday, Mar 14 2012

Details

Detachment
Directed by Tony Kaye
Tribeca Film
Opens March 16

Related Content

More About

Movies about teachers are flypaper for overblown armchair crusaderism, and this overbearingly cynical attempt gets my vote for worst offender yet. Director Tony Kaye, the flaky (or brilliant, depending on your perspective) Brit who scored a cult hit with 1998's American History X and then proceeded to trash-talk himself into an early retirement, attempts a resurrection with Detachment, but he hasn't tempered much with age. The film, written by former teacher Carl Lund and manhandled by Kaye, doesn't add to the stock narrative of a newbie educator learning the ropes at a hardscrabble school so much as slather it with icky personal vitriol. Adrien Brody stars as Henry Barthes (groan), a career substitute whose childhood trauma has left him flamboyantly unable to connect with other people or keep his shit together in general. The movie spans his month-long gig at a Queens high school, where the faculty and students share a similar, absurdly uniform collective malaise. Events range from the risible—our hero defuses a cartoonish thug with a few meaningful words about "getting" his pain—to the downright creepy, as when Barthes shacks up platonically with a teenage hooker (Sami Gayle) he meets on the bus. Kaye, who's also the cinematographer, establishes a drifting, narcotized visual tone that's apt and effective, but the reactionary script brings out the worst in its impressive cast, notably James Caan, Marcia Gay Harden, and Lucy Liu. (Brody, as ever, is all tics.) The movie's motives might be admirable, but its execution is so bogged down in impenetrable old-white-guy self-pity that the real problems facing public education and its practitioners get buried in the wallow.

Related Content

Check out this week's featured ad for Restaurants
More Ads >>
 
My Voice Nation Help
1 comments
  Livefyre
Newest | Oldest
mattcornell
mattcornell

This movie is surreally awful. I can't believe it got a distributor.

 
VOICE Daily Deals

Now Showing

Find capsule reviews, showtimes & tickets for all films in town.

Powered By VOICE Places

Slideshows

Join My Voice Nation for free stuff, film info & more!


Box Office

  1. Man of Steel, 113.1 mil, 125.1 mil
  2. This Is The End, 20.5 mil, 32.8 mil
  3. Now You See Me, 10.3 mil, 80.0 mil
  4. Fast & Furious 6, 9.4 mil, 219.6 mil
  5. The Purge, 8.2 mil, 51.8 mil
  6. The Internship, 7.0 mil, 31.0 mil
  7. Epic, 6.0 mil, 95.4 mil
  8. Star Trek Into Darkness, 5.7 mil, 210.5 mil
  9. After Earth, 3.8 mil, 54.2 mil
  10. Iron Man 3, 2.9 mil, 399.6 mil
Movie Title, Weekly Earnings, Total Earnings

Movie Trailers

View all movie trailers >>
More News Stories >
©2013 Village Voice, LLC, All rights reserved.
Browse Voice Nation
  • Voice Places New York

    Voice Places

    Find everything you're looking for in your city

  • Happy Hour App

    Happy Hour App

    Find the best happy hour deals in your city

  • Daily Deals

    Daily Deals

    Get today's exclusive deals at savings of anywhere from 50-90%

  • Best Of

    Best Of...

    Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city