Down in the Valley film review

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DOWN IN THE VALLEY

David Jacobson's engaging feature - an unlikely choice form the director of Dahmer - features Edward Norton's best performance for years. A lofty and ambitious work, the film attempts to be a cross between High Plains Drifter and Taxi Driver and the fact that it at least partly succeeds makes it an enjoyable if flawed affair.

Although it is set very much in the present, the style is 1970s America, but unlike the retro comedy feel of last year's Sideways, Down in the Valley has a darker side, which is slowly and fascinatingly revealed by both the script and the performers.

Norton is Harlan, a drifter who pumps gas on the edge of the San Fernando Valley in California. He meets and starts a relationship with the much younger Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood, fulfilling the promise she showed as the rebellious teenager in 13), despite protestations from Tobe's father (David Morse). Harlan also makes a big impression on Tobe's younger brother Lonnie (Rory Culkin), who is himself adrift from his family and in need of guidance.

Harlan seems too good to be true, and sure enough, cracks start to emerge in both his character and his relationship with Tobe. Around halfway through the film takes a surprising, edgy turn, and Jacobson cranks up the visual metaphors: Harlan's obsession with horses takes him riding across the freeway, and a crucial scene is set in a fake Western town being used as a film set.

If anything, these attempts at the profound do get in the way of the script, which itself eventually takes one or two liberties with the world set up in the first half of the film. Nevertheless, Down in the Valley has more about it than most new independent films, and thanks to the dynamite performances by Norton and Wood, it's a cut above the rest.

Paul Hurley