Stars: Holly Hunter, Denis Leary, Dennis Hopper, Will Patton, Billy Crudup, Samantha Morton, Jack Black, Greg Germann

Director: Alison Maclean

Summary: The tale of a young man's life in 1970s America as he journeys through the world of drugs and relationships.

Alison Maclean's exhilarating adaptation of Denis Johnson's acclaimed short story collection is a deeply compassionate portrait of one man's descent into drug addiction, filled with a potent blend of surreal imagery and gritty realism. Remaining true to Johnson's original text, and in keeping with the film's substance-soaked subject matter, the film is structured in a blurry, fractured fashion. Billy Crudup stars as FH, a Midwestern twenty-something in the 1970s who has decent intentions, but only seems to make things worse for everyone, including himself. When he meets Michelle (played with ferocious intensity by Samantha Morton), he finds himself falling deeper into the dangerous, desperate world of drug abuse. A tragic event forces FH to confront his destructive lifestyle head on, even when it appears it might be too late. Landing in Arizona, he gets a job writing the newsletter for an assisted living facility, and finds redemption when he's least expecting it. Crudup and Morton, both incredibly engaging screen presences, make JESUS' SON a powerful, darkly comic, and ultimately uplifting motion picture. Holly Hunter, Jack Black, Denis Leary, and Dennis Hopper all make brief appearances as quirky characters FH meets along his journey.

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Drama Fans of the short stories in Denis Johnson's Jesus' Sonwill wonder how anyone could film a book so beautifully, radiantly, defiantly strange. The good news is that Alison Maclean's film version is more than just faithful to the book's spirit: it's the closest thing to a visual equivalent of Johnson's visionary prose. As a series of vignettes in the life of an unnamed Midwestern junkie-slash-holy fool, the stories are linked more through imagery than through anything so linear as a plot. Maclean preserves this episodic structure but adds just enough narrative glue to make the whole thing hang together as a film. (And wisely so; if she hadn't, there'd have been no role at all for Samantha Morton, brilliant here as Michelle, the narrator's girlfriend.) With a hero called Fuckhead, you know this isn't going to be entertainment for the whole family, and some of the scenes of drug use and associated gore are grim indeed. But the movie looks just right and some of its images are so beautiful it hurts: old movies playing in an empty drive-in, snow swirling all around; anaked woman parasailing through the sky with her long red hair streaming behind. Maclean also coaxes wonderful performances from a dream-indie cast, including Morton, the magnetic Billy Crudup as Fuckhead, Dennis Hopper, Holly Hunter, an uncharacteristically understated Denis Leary and even, in a gruesome cameo, Denis Johnson himself. (Hint: look for the knife. Then look away quickly.) Once again, Jack Black hijacks every frame in which he appears, and his turn as a pill-popping orderly gives new meaning to the phrase "I save lives". Things drag a little during the last half-hour, but squirm not: following Fuckhead through rehab and beyond, the book's closing scenes are genuinely redemptive without hitting the audience over the head with a "lesson" of any kind. Jesus' Sonis Maclean's first feature film since 1992's Crush; let's hope she won't make us wait as long before the next fix. --Mary Park

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Theatrical Trailer
Year:	1999
Release Date:	March 25, 2002
Runtime:	103 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	M P 020 D
Label:	Take One Collection
Keywords:	Son, General, Wide, Screen, Drama, Jesus'
Genre:	Drama