“Frailty is an extraordinary work, concealing in its depths not only unexpected story turns but also implications, hidden at first, that make it even deeper and more sad. It is the first film directed by the actor Bill Paxton, who also plays the father and succeeds in making Dad not a villain but a sincere man lost within his delusions. The movie works in so many different ways that it continues to surprise us right until the end.
Perhaps only a first-time director, an actor who does not depend on directing for his next job, would have had the nerve to make this movie. It is uncompromised. It follows its logic right down into hell. On the basis of this film, Paxton is a gifted director; he and his collaborators, writer Brent Hanley, cinematographer Bill Butler and editor Arnold Glassman, have made a complex film that grips us with the intensity of a simple one. We’re with it every step of the way, and discover we hardly suspect where it is going.”
I very much remember Roger Ebert’s review for this small film being dumped out in April. It persuaded me that the studio didn’t know how to market what it had, and that I had to be there opening weekend. The expectations were set a bit too high, but only a bit. What Ebert wrote is true, just not to the ecstatic degree. It’s too modest to be a landmark, though there are moments more fantastical than you expect. The script twists together religion, the heartland and serial killers into a Southern fried character mystery, a place Matthew McConaughey slides right into. I’ve watched it every few years, with enough distance that the surprises can still work on me.
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