Review: 'The Good Mother' Builds Momentum That Never Lands
Already in theaters, The Kind Mother is a drug-fueled drama whose brief runtime of one hour and 29 minutes seems like an eternity.
Hilary Swank, a two-time Oscar winner for Boys Don't Cry and Million Dollar Baby, stars as Marissa Bannings, a journalist who becomes heavily dependent on the bottle after the death of her husband and, more recently, her drug-addicted son Michael. . .
At the funeral, he attacks the pregnant girlfriend of Michael Page (Olivia Cooke), who accuses Marissa of fueling her son's addiction. Later, the two enemies join forces to find out who is really responsible for Michael's murder.
All signs point to Michael's dealer, Ducky (Hopper Penn, son of Sean Penn and Robin Wright), is arguing over a shipment of dirty heroin laced with the deadly fentanyl, known on the street as "breast milk."
There is nothing comforting about the characters in The Good Mother, who seem to be victims of modern mental illness: extreme misery drowned in drug addiction that turns so-called normal people into an army of the zombified undead.
The Good Mother is set in dark and gloomy Albany, New York, where an aura of despair pervades every scene. It's hard for a "good mom" to find the good in anyone, including Marissa's surviving son Toby (Jack Raynor), an Albany cop. with the armor of moral purity.
Marissa's editor (Norm Lewis) at the Albany Times Union (a real newspaper that deserves a livelier introduction) tells her that she's the best writer in her state, even though she "barely knows what the Internet is." Marissa basically bottle feeds instead of developing her creativity.
Director Miles Joris-Peyrofit, working from a script he co-wrote with Madison Harrison, is quick to abandon the suspenseful aspects of his film: maybe it's too interesting? - Preferably play in the city playground. Whenever possible, Albany native Joris-Peyrofit lets the city that formed him speak. Not bad, at least in theory. Director Terrence Malick turned expressive landscapes into art in films like Days of Paradise and The Tree of Life. Unfortunately Joris-Peyrofit is far from Malik and even visual coherence.
Following a promising Sundance debut in 2016 with "As You Are," she dove deep into her artistic pretensions, surpassing Margot Robbie's stardom in the 2019 tragedy Dreamland.
Kind Mother nearly comes into its own when Marissa and Paige follow Toby on a train downtown to the center of their personal hell. But before this lifeless cinematic void reaches its predictable final corner, audiences will join the characters in a dedicated desire to put an end to their adversity.
