Grade: B-

Few actors can go unhinged like Robert Deniro. He can terrify us with nothing more than a look. It was never the violence of his movies that unnerved the audience, it was the glint in his eye like he was enjoying himself on a level we’d never fully understand. Deniro characters were people we want desperately not to exist, because the alternative is too terrifying to face. That’s why people often refer to him as one of the greatest actors, if not the greatest, of his generation, or any generation. The problem is, and this is no surprise to anyone who’s watched movies for the last 15 years or so, that Deniro, that dark mirror into our world, has seemed to disappear. He’s been replaced by a loveable spoof of the tough-guy gangster. Oh, he intimates Ben Stiller just fine in Meet the Parents, but he never intimates us, because the character is a cartoon, a ridiculous concoction created only for laughs. He’s an enjoyable presence to watch on screen, but that’s the problem, I don’t want to have an enjoyable experience with a Deniro movie. I want to be uncomfortable, nervous and worried about what insane thing he’s going to do next. I think the problem is that the self-parodying, caricature Deniro has now replaced the dangerous actor he used to be. When we see him on screen, we expect him to do his Deniro schtick with his faux-tough guy talk and self-aware smile.

I once dressed up like this for Halloween. I did not intimidate anybody.

In Being Flynn Deniro is attempting to find that old Scorcese-starring rage-filled method actor. And he doesn’t do an awful job either. Any other actor giving the same performance, I would probably just say “that was pretty good” and be done with it. But seeing Deniro try to go for the subtly unstable, unpredictable and dangerous character, and coming up short is jarring. In fact, he goes a bit over the top in a lot of scenes, choosing to yell his way through vulgar, racist and homophobic monologues, rather than letting that anger fester within him until it bubbles to the surface. There’s little danger to his character, just the standard crazy, delusional stuff. Crazy’s not what we want though, crazy’s boring. We want to be scared of Deniro again, but it seems to be getting clearer and clearer that he just might not have it in him anymore.

Deniro just remembered Rocky and Bulwinkle

I didn’t hate this movie though. There were redeeming qualities, Julianne Moore’s performance comes to mind, as the depressed, ever suffering mother. Paul Dano is steady, though doesn’t dig quite deep enough for my tastes. And Deniro, despite the above criticism, did have a couple of inspired moments.

The movie is based off the book Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by, you guessed it, Nick Flynn. I haven’t read the book myself, but all accounts it’s awesome and worth a read. The story follows Nick, estranged from his father his entire life, who’s drifting along, dealing with drug addiction and daddy issues. He gets a job at a homeless shelter where his father, recently kicked out of his apartment and cab because of his drinking and craziness, shows up. They’re both aspiring writers and Nick fears he will end up just like his father. A lesser movie would aim for a redemption ending or at least give us some sense of finality, but Being Flynn, to its credit, isn’t interested in either of those things. Sure, Nick seems to have a lot figured out, too much in fact but back to that in a second, but his father is stuck permanently in a static state, forever believing that Viking is ready to publish his novel. Nick’s story isn’t quite earned. He gets addicted to cocaine too easily, then gets off it too easily, then seems to launch a successful writing career much too easily (trust me, it’s fucking hard). Everything just seems to happen to him and I never got the feeling he was actually working toward anything. The most interesting plot in this movie is the bits and pieces of Julianne Moore’s character, the big reveal of her death and the way it’s played. It might come off a bit like melodrama, but in my mind it works. She is the film’s emotional center and probably could’ve been used even more while scaling back Deniro’s performance a bit.

This movie wasn’t a total failure, in fact it was pretty good. But it had the opportunity to be something more and it came up short. This is the kind of movie I would rather be awful than pretty good. I don’t know if that makes sense, but the worst thing I can say about a movie starring an unhinged Robert Deniro is that I’ll most likely forget it in a couple months.