Things We Lost in the Fire and Weirdsville (2007) Tandem Review

Though Benicio Del Toro appears poised to score a lot more mantelpiece smack this fall than Wes Bentley, there may be no more perverse a double bill in 2007 than the tandem of Things We Lost in the Fire and Weirdsville.

One Drug, Two Films

Jerry © Dreamworks

The ultimate brilliance of Things We Lost in the Fire is not the complexity of Benicio Del Toro's portrayal of a one-time attorney struggling with his drug demons. It's the way in which Allan Loeb's script mixes together a pair of near identical throughlines.

You see, both Halle Berry as a bereaved widow and Del Toro as an on-again, off-again heroin addict spend the bulk of the film attempting to deal with the loss of their sources of personal high. In her case it's a husband (David Duchovny), in his case it's a drug, and on both fronts their traumatic withdrawals from these respective daily tonics are remarkably similar.

What's more, Susanne Bier's first English-language film happens to be coming out the same day as Weirdsville, Allan Moyle's more comedic look at the effects of heroin on the Caucasian male. Taken together, this pair of movies is an unintentional before-and-after clarion call, a double bill that despite Moyle's pro-drug sensibilities may well lead the average moviegoer towards the conclusion of Just Say Maybe.

Royce © Magnolia Pictures

Even though the press notes for Moyle's film include his quoted description of Weirdsville as 'Trainspotting shot in Canada - but with more heart,' he swears he never said such a thing. Still, with a pair of heroin anti-heroes coming at us this weekend, it's worth restating that all cinematic track marks when it comes to contemporary heroin addiction films lead back to Danny Boyle's 1996 classic. There will probably never be a scene that is as effective at putting across the chimera of the drug as this drama's plunge-down-the-toilet ha-loo-cination.

But beyond that film, Heath Ledger's work in Candy and Jared Leto's performance in Requiem for a Dream, there is Del Toro as Jerry Sunborne, a man who is presented with the ultimate form of intervention - the death of his best and only friend (David Duchovny). But even that, on its own, would not be enough to get him to really, truly try to kick the heroin habit. It's only through the added presence of, and interaction with, wife Audrey and her two surviving kids that Sunborne has a chance to live up to his last name.

Unusually, Bier had Berry and Del Toro rehearse each day of filming for up to two hours, and it shows. There's an uncommon fragility to their scenes together, with Del Toro displaying the kind of vulnerability that Tommy Lee Jones exhibits in Valley of Elah. It is a small minority of male lead actors who are able to not only get in touch with their vulnerable side, but then be willing and able to share that trajectory with an audience at large.

Frank © Universal Pictures

There's no vulnerability whatsoever attached to the performance of Wes Bentley in Weirdsville. As the still full-on heroin user who, along with semi-dry pal Scott Speedman, hurtles through a night of surreal adventure, Bentley delivers the second breakthrough performance of his young career, following up if you will American Beauty with a chunk of Canadian cheeky. If this doesn't lead to a whole new level of opportunity for the 28-year-old actor, there's something seriously wrong with Hollywood. At the very least, one would hope that enough of the talent agents, managers and producers currently using heroin properly tap the vein of this terrific performance.

Del Toro of course is already a confirmed master of the thespian stutter step, and his work in Things is going to very much put him in the running for this year's Best Actor sweepstakes. What's so remarkable about his latest work is the way he makes the dialogue his own. Bier gives her actors a lot of freedom in that respect, but even so, there are only a handful of actors who can take advantage of that opportunity to carve out truly memorable moments of silence. It's an old adage that the really great film actors can put it across with expressions as well as words, and in Things, there are about a hundred such moments for Del Toro.

Things will make you cry and Weirdsville will make you laugh, kind of like - I imagine - the drug of heroin itself. Ideally, if you're going to go for a double dose, you should see Moyle's film first and Bier's movie second. Then, wait patiently for the arrival in theaters of American Gangster, which kicks it up to the trifecta notch by means of Ridley Scott's spectacular, epic look at the life of Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington).