Travolta and film both fall short of expectations
John Travolta’s heyday of singing and dancing on Grease and swaggering on Pulp Fiction is now nothing more than a distant memory. Set in gloomy Boston and filled with mediocre action, director Philip Martin’s The Forger is disappointing at best. The movie follows Ray Cutter (Travolta) and his life after leaving prison 10 months early. Ray’s former employer and criminal boss, Tommy Keegan (Anson Mount), helped imprison Ray in the first place and later bribed a local judge in order to get Ray.
Upon visiting his family home, Ray is brusquely greeted by his father and former petty thief, Joseph (Christopher Plummer), who calls Ray a fool for leaving prison early. Ray’s son Will (Tye Sheridan), however, is pale and distraught at seeing his father out of prison. It quickly becomes apparent that Ray wanted to leave prison early in order to spend more time with Will, who has a stage IV brain tumor. Joseph further condemns Ray for leaving prison early after he discovers that Ray made a deal with Keegan to bribe the judge that released him from prison. In exchange for the bribe, Ray must forge Monet’s 1875 painting “Woman with a Parasol” in three weeks so it can be exchanged with the original, which in turn would be sold to an international drug cartel boss to pay off Keegan’s debt. The rest of the film follows Ray’s struggle to balance spending time with his dying son and forging the intricate masterpiece.
Throughout the film, Travolta appears to get more and more bored. He lazily delivers his lines in silent mumbles that border on incoherent at times. His eyes have a heavy glaze similar to the one he had as heroin-addicted Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction. Overall, Travolta looks as if someone forced him to be a part of this film.
His co-star Plummer, however, delivers an exciting and rather contrasting performance. He is unafraid to deliver, cursing constantly and providing hard glares at his fellow cast members. It becomes difficult to differentiate whether he is cursing at the characters or at the actors for their poor performances. Despite being a young actor, Sheridan delivers a promising performance as Will. His portrayal of a 15-year-old cancer patient becomes more genuine as his character begins to submit special requests to his father, such as his desire to lose his virginity before his death and to meet his drug-addicted mother, played by Jennifer Ehle. As Will’s health continues to deteriorate, Sheridan’s emotional portrayal of Will becomes stronger. Though the trio of actors generally worked well together, it was no surprise when Sheridan’s character wanted to follow his father and grandfather’s footsteps in the world of crime. Despite certain cliches, there is no question that the film would have been much stronger as a whole had Travolta delivered a less lethargic performance.
Overall, the film moves at a very slow pace sprinkled with the occasional action scene. However, the action scenes are short and do not include much detail. For example, when Keegan sends his men to stalk and intimidate Ray into creating another forgery, Ray responds with his recurring apathetic behavior and nonchalantly beats them, telling them to leave him alone when he is with his son. The development of Ray and Will’s relationship throughout the film contributes greatly to the particularly slow nature of this “crime” movie, as there are several scenes dedicated to the reparation of the pair’s relationship, which is full of cheesy moments. Will’s cancer serves as a catalyst for even tackier “feel-good” scenes, as it causes Ray to agree to things he might normally say no to. For example, when Will wants to meet his mother, Ray goes out of his way to find her and forces her to get her act together to meet their son. Had Will been cancer-free, there would have been no place for such a scene in this film.
This film had the potential to be great, but fell short for several reasons. Mainly, Travolta’s apathetic demeanor and cursory actions resulted in a lackluster performance that served as a distraction from the overall themes of the film. In addition, the premise itself seems like a bad combination of previous crime films. The whole trope of the son having a fast-acting terminal disease, which causes the father-son relationship to be mended, has been explored countless times. At the beginning of the film, Ray and Will’s relationship appears strained, likely because of Ray’s time spent in prison. However, as the film progresses, the pair bonds over working together to settle Ray’s debt. Also, the concept of forging art and exchanging it in order to steal the original is a storyline that has been told before in all sorts of ways. Had the writers and actors worked together to create stronger characters with more realistic perspectives and less corny attitudes, The Forger could have been a much better film.