Flashbacks of a Fool Review

 

Daniel Craig is a superstar, but he still makes time for artsy indie fare like Flashbacks of a Fool.  Flashbacks is a beautifully rendered movie that is host to many inspired performances, but it never quite reaches its crescendo.

Craig stars as Joe Scott, a washed up actor that deals with being a has-been by drinking mass quantities of alcohol, snorting drugs, and having threesomes with blurry women.  His life sucks except for the fact that it doesn’t.  The guy’s rich, like mega-stupid rich, but for some reason he just can’t keep it together. The only thing that keeps him grounded is his housekeeper (Eve).  Once Joe receives a call from his mother telling him that his best friend had died he decided that it was time to walk into the ocean and reflect on the life that led him to where he is now.  Enter the Flashbacks.  As Joe remembers his childhood the audience is treated to extremely long flashback sequences that show him as a young boy hanging out with his friend, fooling around with his older (married) neighbor, and dressing up like Bowie while spending quality time with who would become his best friends wife.  

All of the actors in this film are brilliant, including Eve who was quite impressive as Joe’s frank housekeeper.  I’d have liked to have seen more of her in the flick, but the name of the movie is Flashbacks of a Fool, not a Fool Living in the Moment.  Harry Eden also does a good job of playing young Joe.  He mixes the right amount of innocence and wonder with just a smidgen of cocky.  But by the performance that made the biggest impression, besides Craig, was that of Felicity Jones as the young Ruth Davies.  She was intoxicating and completely captivating during every second of her screen-time.  

Flashbacks of a Fool isn’t a bad movie, it’s just a movie that never settled on a clear direction.  The film is beautifully shot, populated with amazing actors, utilizes an awesome score, but still I never felt like it delivered the conclusion I was looking for.  That’s what life is though, a series of events with no apparent ending.  Although I’m pretty sure that in real life threesomes aren’t blurry (note to director: people like watching hot people having sex in focus).  I’d definitely recommend Flashbacks to the art-film going public, but for everyone else I’d advise Netflixing it.  Because in the end Flashbacks of a Fool was almost a killer film, but was to blurry for it to make its mark.

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