Broken - My thoughts

SPOILERS!!!!



It's easy to trash a movie like this - one that focuses on the dark underbelly or dregs of society and the characters that inhabit it. One critic said "only for die hard fans of Sisto and Graham." I am a fan of Jeremy Sisto's work and he has done several indie movies in this genre. Let's just say, they aren't "feel good" films and the characters are difficult, if not impossible, to like even though the performances from the actors are well done. Unfortunately, they tend to have a limited appeal and usually go straight to DVD.

It usually takes me a few days after seeing a film to really make sense and absorb everything in order to make an informed and intelligent assessment. I think they deserve that much. And, if I can, I try to watch the movie more than once [what did we ever do before vhs and dvd?] to fill in bits and pieces. I appreciate the previous comment and the well-thought "review" from another post on this board.

I read that one before seeing the film so I had a heads up on the possibility of the symbolism of Will portraying Addiction and that Hope was experiencing a heroin Nightmare. And I tend to agree with that assessment to some degree. And it definitely was thought-provoking - in depicting the possible dark roads one might take in a life without any positive direction.

But I felt the movie as a whole was very "on the nose" and that there was little subtlety at play - from the dialogue to the camera work. A good example was when we first see the track marks on Will's arm - the camera makes a point to focus on it - just in case we didn't see it.

There was definitely some symbolism and significance with tattoos. Will has a snake on his lower abdomen and we see another snake on Hope's lower back, but only after she shoots heroin for the first time. BUT, there are a couple of other scenes where she doesn't have it on her back so I wasn't certain if it was a continuity error or we are intended to believe it was part of her nightmare. In fact, I think it's a clue to where we are supposed to delineate between Hope's nightmare and reality. But it's often confusing.

One scene in particular is where HOPE is smoking crack? (forgive me for my ignorance of drug use) and she is talking to someone about "I give them everything, my heart and soul and it's not enough ..." Who is she talking to? Will? We only see an arm band and the person doesn’t say anything. If it is Will, then the scene takes place before she shot heroin even though we are seeing it after. Once again the camera makes a point to focus on her lower back - no tattoo this time.

I know the movie is fractured in its chronology but there is no clear explanation for this scene unless that was her own reality of drug use in L.A. It is not until the final scene where she is shooting up in the bathroom of the diner and she is assisted out by Thomas the dishwasher [her saviour?] she does not have the tattoo on her back.

Aha! That is her reality.

She is not, in fact, a waitress at the diner. She is just another junkie hanging out there waiting to score. Tess Harper - looking much more human - is the real waitress who walks in and finds Hope on the floor. It would also explain the scene with Hope and Thomas on the roof of the diner having a smoke, even though there were patrons in the diner and Hope was the only waitress on duty. If it was all in her dream, it didn't matter.


For me, the scenes with Sisto held the most spark and tension. He's got the market cornered on psycho-but-sexy characters. It's scary to think of the roads I would "willingly" take if a bad a$$ who looked and talked like Jeremy Sisto was leading me. On repeat viewings I tended to fast fwd to his scenes. The whole sequence where he finally shows up in the diner was riveting and I'm sure it was difficult to shoot with so many characters in to direct.

Sisto, Michael Goorjian, Linda Hamilton and Tess Harper (wonderful here in a difficult role) were the actors who held my interest the most. But this is supposed to be Heather Graham’s movie.

I've only seen her in a few movies (I thought she did a fine job in supporting roles in From Hell and Bobby) but after watching her in Broken, I think that Heather Graham needs a stronger director to bring out anything from her that cuts beneath the surface to be believable, especially if she is the lead in a movie. She isn't a strong actor and there were several scenes that I felt she was just going through the motions – waving her arms and bugging her eyes to indicate her actions without any emotion driving it. Another female lead with better acting chops might have made the difference in raising this movie to a higher level.

That being said, the story is populated with characters who are wannabes and losers. Hope is definitely a wannabe musician. We only hear her play and sing one song - which is not really that great because she is neither a good musician or a great singer – even though she claims to be a singer-songwriter. (Heather Graham learned how to play guitar for the movie)

The song, The Hanging Tree, is fine and the music video is quite good - Graham sounds better, too, because she had a backing band featuring the songwriter behind her and her limited vocal quality wasn't overly exposed. It made me wonder, what if we had seen her playing a successful gig with that band and WILL still manages to seduce her? That would have been more interesting to me. I'm always baffled and intrigued by successful artists who end up as train wrecks.

The point is that we never get the impression that Hope was an accomplished musician in Cleveland even though she felt she was ready for L.A. She was clearly depicted as an amateur from the beginning and so I was never compelled to feel sorry for the fact that she isn't making it in Los Angeles. The sad truth is that la la land is filled to overflowing with these pathetic characters. In reality, Hope wouldn't have made it beyond the first round of auditions on American Idol.

The fact that Will says she is great is just another way to insinuate himself into her life. It's what she WANTS to hear.

Also, a dishevelled exterior and messy hair does nothing to portray the real damage that heroin addiction does to a person's appearance. Sisto and Graham are far too good-looking here but it would have been really painful to watch them otherwise. I will give them props for spending so much time on the floor in a cruddy apartment. [chances are the place smelled like cat pi$$ - and I can attest to the fact that acting in that situation takes a strong stomach]

If the movie was intended to be Hope's addiction nightmare, and her version of the 7 deadly sins, then the scenes that don’t feature her or her addiction aka Will have no real place. Perhaps it was just that the actors (Jake Busey and Joe Hursley) didn't appeal to me but I could have done without the conversations between the two junkies taking up several minutes of screen time. Was it supposed to be some sort of comic relief? If so, it was lost on me.

In my experience watching many of Sisto's films, I’ve learned to overlook things in a low budget indie that a project with a bigger budget and more time would have been able to fix, however, a few things could have been avoided with better planning in pre-production or set up.

Little nitpick but ... the scene depicting Will waiting in the hallway outside the dealer's apartment while he was prostituting Hope for drugs - it looked almost identical to the hallway outside Hope's apartment (even though the bedroom was clearly different) and the camera angle was the same, too. I had to rewatch the scene to make sure it was a different location. And the mirror in the bathroom of the diner clearly reflects the exploded blood squib on Sisto's back and the wall has blood on it from a previous take.

In the end, I was left with the sense that there was such a small budget and tight schedule, that practically every scene shot made it to the movie and there was not a lot of time for retakes.

I think they should have left the alternate ending in. Upon killing [her] Will, Hope appears to have found her way out of her addiction [with the help of Thomas, her saviour] and we leave them on the beach but "Will" is always going to find another victim to prey on as we see him picking up another starry-eyed wanna be and heading off into the sunset. Hope's addiction has come full circle [beginning and ending on the beach] but the cycle still continues with someone else. I don't know why they felt it wouldn't work.

But I am still left with the question of why was Thomas missing during the scenes where Will shows up at the diner. Did he leave to call the cops? Did he represent her conscience and the sole remains of her virtue? I guess I need to go back and watch it again.

Wow.

Very impressive review.