“˜The Reckoning’ offers odd mix of mystery, modern storytelling
By Daily Bruin Staff
March 3, 2004 9:00 p.m.
“The Reckoning” Directed by Paul McGuigan
Paramount Classics
Potential punch lines and clever witticisms aside, it seems
almost too ironic that Paramount Classics decided to release
“The Reckoning” just a week after the opening of
“The Passion of the Christ.” Both films deal with the
foundations of Christianity, but in almost exclusively opposite
ways, and end up having equally opposite setbacks. While “The
Passion” focuses too much on the mechanical process of
Jesus’ death and ignores its subject’s spirituality,
“The Reckoning” ignores historical accuracy to the
point of absurdity, instead narrowing in on the moral quandary of
Nicholas (Paul Bettany), a priest on the run. Adapted from Barry
Unsworth’s famed novel “Morality Play,”
“The Reckoning” puts Nicholas in the Middle Ages, where
the existence of, well, morality plays allowed the Church to impart
its message onto the people through acting troupes that performed
Bible stories. Running away from his past, Nicholas joins a troupe
that, under the leadership of Martin (Willem Dafoe), decides to
stage a new play about a local real-life murder, and in the
process, realizes the murder may be more of a murder mystery.
Director Paul McGuigan’s England seems to be more a forgotten
slum of Rohan than a real place, where seemingly independent women
do everything from take their children to the theater to serve as
members of theater troupes. And while the language of the plays can
pass as Middle English translations, the off-stage dialogue feels
so painfully modern, John Grisham wishes he wrote many of the
lines. At one point, Nicholas demands the town’s lord,
“Tell the people the truth. They have a right to know.”
Nicholas obsesses over the truth for most of the second half of the
film, but any sort of focus with which McGuigan handles
Nicholas’ character gets lost when dealing with the rest of
the cast. Martin’s early questioning of the condemned
murderer establishes him as the “outsider who cares,”
but his interests are quickly forgotten when he wants to use the
woman to generate higher ticket sales for his new play. At that
point, Nicholas’ sense of justice finally takes over. But the
film spends so much time revealing Nicholas’ past that by the
time his character is almost understandable, the film is almost
over. Ultimately “The Reckoning” is torn between being
a movie about uncovering a murder mystery and one about the
development of modern theatrical storytelling technique. Either
topic could make a fascinating film, but nobody really wants to
watch “Shakespeare in Love with Agatha Christie.”
““ Jake Tracer
