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But that glam era faded, and Jon Bon Jovi decided to devote himself to acting. Yeah, right, most of the world was thinking. And Bruce Willis can play music. For his first leading role, the former rocker--surprisingly--stars in a small, independent foreign film. Stranger still, he can act. The Leading Man is the kind of movie that, five years from now, you'll see in the video store, pick up the case, read "Two Thumbs Up" and wonder why you've never heard of it. You'll take it home and be pleasantly surprised that it's a pretty good, complex story with lots of minor subplots. But it's the kind of movie that's more interesting to think about than to watch. Directed by Australian John Duigan (Flirting, Sirens) from a screenplay written by his sister, freelance journalist Virginia Duigan, the film teems with sibling secret language and unspoken innuendo--at times, you're sure they know what's going on, but it's unclear to viewers. Though that may be their point. Bon Jovi plays Robin Grange, a hot Hollywood action-movie star who comes to London to find respect by acting in a new play by England's greatest playwright, Felix Webb (Lambert Wilson). The set is filled with gossip about the married Felix's torrid affair with the play's ingenue, Hilary (Thandie Newton). For reasons that remain unclear, Robin insinuates himself into the tangled web and ends up offering to seduce the angry wife, Elena (Anna Galiena) to distract her from her husband's philandering. As the movie rushes along and the play careens toward opening night, tension builds as this bizarre situation gets stranger and stranger. Felix's morality play, also called The Leading Man, mirrors the dilemmas of the real characters. The play follows a hit man, played by Robin, who's hired to kill an old man for some long-ago crime--but he falls in love with the hit's daughter, played by Hilary. The end is unexpected, but the rash of double characters and general confusion on screen never allows you to forget you're watching a movie. The female characters suffer this flaw particularly. It's clear what the Duigans wanted to do with Elena--transform her from a pathetic, scorned wife to a powerful, liberated woman--but by maintaining the mystery of her illicit relationship, they don't allow viewers to get inside her skin. It seems impossible that her reasonable fury at her husband is so easily doused by the younger man's attentions. Hilary's character is meant to go the other way. But it seems equally impossible that she devolves from tough young actress to wishy-washy pawn in situations she doesn't even try to understand. The moral questions of doing bad things for good reasons rise and fall more quickly than Robin's interest in a variety of woman, and it's refreshing that the film doesn't beat its message over the viewer's head. But the characters remain so enigmatic, none of them really gets into the viewer's head, either. When Felix eventually freaks out at the havoc he's created, it seemed forced; his head-clutching and grimacing draw from the "Stress" section of Acting 101. The most moving actors are Laura Austin Little, Daniel Worters and Camilla Ohlsson, who have straightforward parts as the Webbs' children. Concerned, saddened and confused by their parents, they never allow the viewer to think that the affairs are victimless. |
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