Uptight Scott's adolescent daughter goes missing in Los Angeles and he plunges into the world of hardcore porn to try to find her. The musical score by Fred Nitzsche provides him with a reflective companion -- from the quiet, slightly eerie tones of an ancient church organ in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the beginning to the shrill squeal of an electronic guitar in the depraved city.
The writer/director Paul Schrader has captured the milieu perfectly at the opening in snowbound Grand Rapids. The Van Dorn family makes good solid furniture. They are earnest Calvinists. There is no corruption. Nothing is going on. The family gets together for Christmas dinner, Mamma serves the turkey, the carefully groomed children laugh, the head of the family says grace, and Normal Rockwell gets the whole scene down on canvas. It's a credible portrait of blissful innocence.
When Scott's gawky daughter turns up missing on a church visit to LA, then appears in a skin flick, the movie follows Scott to LA too and it falls apart, killed by the pernicious murk. The whole narrative makes no sense. The police won't help Scott so he begins hanging around with people in the porn industry. He poses as a investor in these schlock movies. I ask you, the discerning viewer, can you believe an upright middle-aged businessman from a strict religious background could don a mustache, a wig, a necklace, and a gaudy shirt, and then pass himself off as an inside man in the skin industry?
But that's just one of the movie's problems. Scott enlists the aid of a whore (Season Hubley) and promises to take care of her if she'll guide him through the blue and rose of the neon-tinted underworld. Then at the end, after a weak attempt to give her some money, he abandons her to her fate. Just two sh*ts that passed in the night. What kind of morality is that?
And when, finally, he bashes through walls and brains everyone who stands in his way, he finds his daughter shivering with fright in a corner, extends his hand, and says soothingly, "Let's go home." And she lets him have a broadside. She wants to stay here in this living hell with people who love her, because Scott never loved her at home, she was never pretty enough or good enough. There is absolutely no set up for this exchange, no hint of previous discord. That scene of the family Christmas stands in direct contradiction -- everybody dumb but happy.
Scott is restrained in the role of anxious, tearful, enraged father. This film seems to have begun a deflation in his career. I don't know what was behind it but after several sterling performances in the 60s, he made a series of movies of lesser interest and then disappeared entirely for a few years before showing up in a few supporting roles.
No one else in the cast stands out, but probably Peter Boyle as the cynical, flawed but effective private investigator is the most believable character.
Not a total loss. There are some moments of humor. The long-haired skinny young director of a skin flick is proud to be a graduate of UCLA's film school. And there is a keenly observed conversation about predetermination and sex.
But it can't make up for scenes like that in which Scott first watches a hardcore movie in which his virginal daughter is gang banged and the camera lingers on George C. Scott's face slowly filling with anguish and then hate until he screams and covers his face. The shot lasts too long. Nobody could carry it off. I hate to use the word, but it all seems "dated." It's less about a man's search for his missing daughter than it is about giving the good folks of Grand Rapids a tour of the odious underworld of Hollywood's porn industry.
The writer/director Paul Schrader has captured the milieu perfectly at the opening in snowbound Grand Rapids. The Van Dorn family makes good solid furniture. They are earnest Calvinists. There is no corruption. Nothing is going on. The family gets together for Christmas dinner, Mamma serves the turkey, the carefully groomed children laugh, the head of the family says grace, and Normal Rockwell gets the whole scene down on canvas. It's a credible portrait of blissful innocence.
When Scott's gawky daughter turns up missing on a church visit to LA, then appears in a skin flick, the movie follows Scott to LA too and it falls apart, killed by the pernicious murk. The whole narrative makes no sense. The police won't help Scott so he begins hanging around with people in the porn industry. He poses as a investor in these schlock movies. I ask you, the discerning viewer, can you believe an upright middle-aged businessman from a strict religious background could don a mustache, a wig, a necklace, and a gaudy shirt, and then pass himself off as an inside man in the skin industry?
But that's just one of the movie's problems. Scott enlists the aid of a whore (Season Hubley) and promises to take care of her if she'll guide him through the blue and rose of the neon-tinted underworld. Then at the end, after a weak attempt to give her some money, he abandons her to her fate. Just two sh*ts that passed in the night. What kind of morality is that?
And when, finally, he bashes through walls and brains everyone who stands in his way, he finds his daughter shivering with fright in a corner, extends his hand, and says soothingly, "Let's go home." And she lets him have a broadside. She wants to stay here in this living hell with people who love her, because Scott never loved her at home, she was never pretty enough or good enough. There is absolutely no set up for this exchange, no hint of previous discord. That scene of the family Christmas stands in direct contradiction -- everybody dumb but happy.
Scott is restrained in the role of anxious, tearful, enraged father. This film seems to have begun a deflation in his career. I don't know what was behind it but after several sterling performances in the 60s, he made a series of movies of lesser interest and then disappeared entirely for a few years before showing up in a few supporting roles.
No one else in the cast stands out, but probably Peter Boyle as the cynical, flawed but effective private investigator is the most believable character.
Not a total loss. There are some moments of humor. The long-haired skinny young director of a skin flick is proud to be a graduate of UCLA's film school. And there is a keenly observed conversation about predetermination and sex.
But it can't make up for scenes like that in which Scott first watches a hardcore movie in which his virginal daughter is gang banged and the camera lingers on George C. Scott's face slowly filling with anguish and then hate until he screams and covers his face. The shot lasts too long. Nobody could carry it off. I hate to use the word, but it all seems "dated." It's less about a man's search for his missing daughter than it is about giving the good folks of Grand Rapids a tour of the odious underworld of Hollywood's porn industry.