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TWO MEN IN TOWN Send This Review to a Friend
Director Rachid Bouchareb is earnest in attempting to expose injustice in “Two Men in Town,” adapted by Olivier Lorelle from a 1973 French film that starred Alain Delon and Jean Gabin. This time Forest Whitaker stars as William Garnett, who is paroled from prison and tries to start a new life in a New Mexico border town. But he is up against a vengeful sheriff and also up against a screenplay that is not very believable at crucial moments.
The acting is good, but the situations concocted are strained. Garnett has served a long prison stretch for killing a deputy. Harvey Keitel plays Bill Agati, the sheriff, who can’t forgive Garnett and wants to make life miserable for him, or worse. There is another nemesis, Luis Guzmán as Terence, a nasty criminal who presses to get Garnett into a scheme involving illegal immigration.
The one positive force trying to help him is Brenda Blethyn as Emily Smithy, a no-nonsense parole officer. Blethyn is terrific, but somehow the character seems totally out of place in that environment. Dolores Heredia is cast as the sympathetic Teresa, a woman whom Garnett meets and wants to build a new life with against all the odds.
Whitaker is very convincing as Garnett, but the melodramatic screenplay builds toward an unsatisfying conclusion. This is one of those sincere films with something to say but needs to say it better. A Cohen Media Group release. Reviewed March 7, 2015.
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