Joaquin Phoenix
“DON’T WORRY, HE WON’T GET FAR ON FOOT” My rating: B
114 minutes | MPAA rating: R
In “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot” a seemingly hopeless alcoholic turns his life around after a car crash leaves him a quadriplegic.
Is it churlish of me to admit that I actually prefer the first part of the film — the drunken, obnoxious, grotesquely guzzling part — over the uplifting recovery-through-AA second half?
Gus Van Sant’s latest feature is the fact-based story of John Callahan, who with the one hand he could still partly control drew some of the blackest, funniest cartoons ever printed. The film’s title, in fact, is the caption of one of his scandalous creations: A posse of cowboys on horseback come across an empty wheelchair in the desert. “Don’t worry,” says the sheriff in charge, “he won’t get far on foot.”
Callahan, who died in 2010 at age 51, is portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix as a reprehensible asshole who — perhaps because of his traumatic infirmity — slowly discovers his own humanity and self-worth.
Certainly his pre-accident life was nothing to be proud of. A native of the Portland area, Callahan worked manual labor and spent every recreational hour sucking down the booze. The film suggests that at least part of his problem was that he was abandoned as a child by his mother — evidently an unmarried Roman Catholic girl who gave up her baby to the nuns. It was a betrayal that Callahan never got over…or perhaps he was just looking for an excuse for his destructive behavior.
He was also sexually abused as a child, although the film makes no mention of that.
Without actually showing the crash, Van Sant and his co-writers (Jack Gibson and William Andrew Eatman, adapting Callahan’s memoir) depict a day of furious barhopping by Callahan and his newfound drinking buddy Dexter (Jack Black). Rarely has unfettered, dedicated, puke-your-guts-out boozing been captured with such gleeful intensity. It’s appalling, certainly, but also weirdly attractive.
Callahan wakes up in an ER where an not-particularly-sympathetic MD gives him the bad news. He’ll probably never feel anything below the neck.
After months of rehab Callahan is introduced to a motorized wheelchair…which means he can now drive himself to the liquor store and pick up where he left off. Granted, it’s frustrating trying to rest a bottle in the elbow of one arm while using your only mobile hand to twist off the cap…but a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.
There’s a manic, almost Keystone Kops intensity to Callahan’s use of his motorized wheelchair, which he drives at daredevil velocity, weaving in and out of street traffic. Now and then he overturns this mini-dune buggy and must be lifted back into the seat by a passerby. Even after getting clean, it’s obvious that he needs some sort of addiction…now speed has replaced alcohol as his drug of choice.
Butler's Cinema Scene 