‘Flag Day’: Film Review | Cannes 2021 – The Hollywood Reporter

Sean Penn’s directing profession has adopted an erratic trajectory, channeling uncooked feeling in his 1991 debut The Indian Runner, peaking with the ruminative 2007 survival drama Into the Wild and taking a nosedive with 2016’s tone-deaf The Final Face, which used a backdrop of human rights violations in Africa to spin a tortured romance between stunning Westerners. He returns to the Cannes competitors 5 years after that fiasco with Flag Day, which is a big enchancment even when its honest intentions can’t get previous the prosaic portrait of a con man making a reckless seize for the American Dream.

That is Penn’s first time directing himself, starring reverse his daughter Dylan Penn (and in a smaller position, his son Hopper Jack Penn) in an adaptation of journalist Jennifer Vogel’s 2005 memoir Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life.

As a examine of sophisticated household dynamics, of binding love intertwined with the damage of a person who fails these closest to him over and over, the movie is hindered by a surprisingly pedestrian screenplay from proficient brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth that ladles on the literary voiceover to anesthetizing impact. However it additionally succumbs to Penn’s worst indulgences, loading up on massive actor-ish explosions of volatility somewhat than making an attempt to get to the misplaced soul of a determined man and the craving of a daughter who needs so badly to consider that he’s able to change.

The title comes from John Vogel’s birthday on June 14, a date that commemorates the adoption of the U.S. flag in 1777. After the financial institution has foreclosed on one more property he purchased on a purchase order plan past his means, his jaded mom (Dale Dickey in a short however all the time welcome look) says, “By no means belief a bastard born on Flag Day.” Calling himself an entrepreneur, John has a historical past of shopping for up homes and companies he can’t afford, then both disappearing or torching the buildings. His daughter Jennifer (Dylan Penn) observes in her infinite narration that he believed being born on Flag Day meant the nation owed him a celebration.

The film begins at his inevitable finish in 1992, the fruits of a six-month police manhunt after John skipped bail. Regina King makes a cameo as a sympathetic U.S. marshal who is aware of the way it feels to lose a father; she gently talks Jennifer via the chaotic occasions she has watched play out on reside TV information, explaining that John printed $22 million in faux payments and confronted as much as 25 years in jail.

The motion then skips again to totally different factors within the Nineteen Seventies and ‘80s, with Jennifer and her youthful brother Nick performed at age 6 and 4, respectively, by Addison Tymec and Cole Flynn, and of their tween years by Jadyn Rylee and Beckam Crawford earlier than Penn’s personal youngsters step in. Jennifer recounts how John got here and went from their lives all through their childhood, making an attempt to make each impulsive resolution appear to be it was a part of a plan. When the newest plan implodes in the summertime of 1975, he takes off, leaving their mom Patty (Katheryn Winnick) with unpaid payments, power despair and a ingesting behavior.

When Patty is not capable of cope, the youngsters are taken by their Uncle Beck (Josh Brolin) to reside with their dad and his a lot youthful new girlfriend Debbie (Bailey Noble). However his money owed as soon as once more catch as much as him in brutal trend, prompting extra disruption. By the point Jennifer is a goth excessive schooler, she’s doing medicine and appears more likely to comply with her father’s darkish path. When Patty’s new man Doc (Norbert Leo Butz) makes an attempt to sexually assault her and her mom chooses to stay blind to his sleaziness, Jennifer storms off and boards a Greyhound bus to seek out her dad.

From comparatively early on, the screenplay settles right into a repetitive sample of upheaval, contemporary begins and bitter disappointments, punctuated by so many bouts of screaming rage they pack little punch. The movie might have used extra of its quieter moments, like an emotional farewell between Jennifer and Nick, during which he clearly feels deserted however understands that his sister has no alternative.

When she finds John, Jennifer turns into decided to straighten out each herself and her dad, and he performs alongside, shopping for a briefcase for an invented place in government gross sales administration. He even holds down a routine job driving airport freight autos for a time, nevertheless it’s not lengthy earlier than his prison urges take maintain once more with a financial institution theft, including to a path of failed schemes and laundered cash.

As each actor and director, Penn clearly is drawn to outlaw characters who’ve purchased into the parable of America as a land of alternative for all. He conveys affection and compassion for the self-delusion that permits John to consider himself as an adventurer and to transmit that pleasure to his daughter. We’ve seen this character numerous occasions earlier than, however the film falters much more when he’s not round. Whereas Dylan Penn’s efficiency is okay, the writing turns into self-conscious in its mixture of grit and downbeat poetry as Jennifer is flung out on her personal, hanging with junkies and no-hopers in a collection of unhealthy wigs as she tries to determine who she’s destined to change into.

There are amusing ironies laced via the script — that Jennifer tries to rip-off her manner into a university journalism course utilizing methods she picked up from her dad however as a substitute makes it primarily based on her pure skill; that John spent his time in jail working within the print store, studying expertise that might facilitate his grandest scheme.

However an excessive amount of of the drama feels predictably acquainted, regardless of its “primarily based on a real story” stamp of authenticity. “Folks do change,” John tells Jennifer when he resurfaces whereas on parole after she has begun working at Minneapolis different newspaper Metropolis Pages. We all know that Jennifer is true to be cautious of letting him again in her life, not simply because the tip of the story has already been revealed however due to the preprogrammed really feel of the script and the boilerplate character arc.

Merely with the ability to get actors like King, Brolin, Butz, Dickey and Eddie Marsan for tiny roles exhibits that Penn nonetheless instructions business respect, and he surrounds himself with succesful craftspeople. The combination of light guitar on Joseph Vitarelli’s rating with unique songs by Cat Energy, Glen Hansard and Into the Wild collaborator Eddie Vedder, particularly, provides texture. And DP Danny Moder shoots the establishing scenes of father-daughter love via the golden haze of reminiscence (a reminder of the Terrence Malick affect on Penn), in distinction to the bleaker look as John’s lies change into unimaginable to purchase.

It’s simply too unhealthy there’s no more of a private stamp on the fabric to rescue it from its indie-film clichés. Flag Day just isn’t a whole misfire, and if a no-name director had made it, the film would in all probability get a move. However contemplating the emotional stakes concerned it’s neither terribly memorable nor transferring.