April 9, 2003

By Dennis Harvey

THE FIRST GLIMPSE we get of Billy Bob Thornton in Levity – hangdog-stoic, craggy features bisected by prison bars, long biblical locks presumably grayed by the horror, the horror – writes suffering so large you might think you're watching Job the Movie, or maybe Sisyphus: Still Rollin' It. Sometimes I wonder if the résumé flipsiding Thornton's 8-by-10-inch glossy includes (under "Special Skills") "Available to die, metaphorically or otherwise, for any and all sins."

This is a rare personality type for a star to be these days, the fallen angel as masochist. In ye olden times many female stars eked careers out of noble-sacrifice scenarios; more recently, Sylvester Stallone tried to offer the human-punching-bag act (see Lock Up, Cop Land, various Rockys) for canonization, but who could ever take him seriously?

Alternately a joke, a weirdo, and an extraordinary actor – and that's just offscreen – Thornton has the sheer force of conviction to make semiaccidental movie stardom look like an ordeal indeed. How can he not know about living in a private hell? If taking part in Armageddon couldn't make a grown man cry, then surely getting his name lasered off ex-wife no. 5, Angelina Jolie – or getting involved with her in the first place – would suffice. What about those formative years in Arkansas with a psychic mom, a perfect bleak-meets-freak recipe for skewed adulthood? The fruitless decade-plus spent flogging scripts, doing bit parts, getting hospitalized for malnutrition before One False Move and Sling Blade? After that last one, success wasn't necessarily sweet. A journalist told me once that Thornton kept bursting into tears during their interview, sobbing out hard truths like how classic rock (ZZ Top in particular) will always kick the ass of grunge (Nirvana in particular). If Sling Blade was something of a false idol, his directorial follow-ups seemed to invite crucifixion. No matter how troubled the production was, there seemed no good reason for All the Pretty Horses to fail its source so badly, while the promising trailer-park comedy Daddy and Them finally hit cable this year – a "new" movie shelved so long that it features a man (Jim "Ernest" Varney) who's been dead for more than three years. In the meantime singer-songwriter Thornton released an album of honky-tonk soul-barings that won even less respect than Vincent Gallo's. As all of these signs and wonders might portend, Levity is ironically titled, being just about the opposite of funny ha-ha. Thornton plays Manual Jordan, bounced from juvy to 21 years in a maximum-security pen. The parole board thinks he's now paid his debt to society. Jordan, on the other hand, knows "I'll never be redeemed"; he tells us so on the soundtrack.

Forced back onto the faceless wintry streets of his East Coast town (actually Montreal, shot like a series of Edward Hopper paintings by Roger Deakins), Jordan fast becomes the little penitent that could, doing good on several fronts. He's dragged into room-and-board usefulness by Miles (Morgan Freeman), a tough-loving pastor whose soup kitchen is funded by the parking fees of ravers who visit the dance club across the street – after 15 compulsory minutes of preaching, that is. Among them is pass-out queen Sofia (Kirsten Dunst). During sober moments she glimpses the protective-father-figure filling to Jordan's crusty humble pie, even getting involved in his reluctant dispersal of kinder, gentler "scared straight" wisdoms to local at-risk teens.

Meanwhile Jordan courts battle-scarred Adele (Holly Hunter) for reasons not immediately clear – though it's easy to guess she's connected to his long-ago crime of killing a convenience-store clerk. Adele has her own juvenile trouble trying to keep "pissed-off little fuck" son Abner (Geoffrey Wigdor) from drifting into senseless gang violence.

These are all actors ready and able to do a great deal with very little, while writer-director Ed Solomon levies wise restraint on elements that might easily have become way too much. Levity is one of those movies saved from sentimentality and contrivance only by its determinedly lowercase execution. Like certain pretentious older plays and pre-"indie" independent movies, it throws together several lonely people in the cold night, then does everything but haul in the magi to ensure that shining ray of hope at last peeks through. Maybe Solomon is "atoning" here for the sin of silliness, one he's committed through writing such hit-and-miss entertainments as Men in Black, Charlie's Angels, What Planet Are You From?, Super Mario Bros., and both Bill and Ted flicks. This sure could have been worse. Just think of the heartfelt little movies we might endure from a born-again Joel Schumacher, say, or a meditative Chris Columbus.

The sainthood he's attracted to isn't really Thornton's most flattering outerwear, as witnessed in the uncured ham of Sling Blade. He's better when smoked and a little sour: the nominations he didn't get for Monster's Ball and The Man Who Wasn't There were Oscar's biggest crimes since letting Roberto Benigni onto the premises. Still, his compelling oddity holds this frail but ultimately affecting morality tale together.