Brood over Buscemi
Lonesome Jim is Indie Drudgery by Numbers

Steve Buscemi’s acting resume boasts two decades of indie classics, zipping from Mr. Pink to Ghost World, and his much-deserved art house cred remains tops. Yet, cancel out superb ‘90s Coens fare Fargo and The Big Lebowski with a rush of recent flotsam like The Island and Mr. Deeds, and Buscemi’s artistic mind has tasted one sour sham too many.

As a director, he’s lesser known, but in terms of scale, character and divergence, his films adhere to his earlier acting choices. Helming the moderately celebrated Trees Lounge and the widely ignored Animal Factory, Buscemi has worked briefly behind the camera on high profile, quality cable productions like The Sopranos and Oz.

His latest directing effort, Lonesome Jim, is thick on the dreariness and melancholy his sourpuss face is associated with so often on screen, but lacks the heartbeat Buscemi personally brings to roles, even in campy drivel like Armageddon or Con Air. The story trails Casey Affleck as the title character, a 20-something burnout who returns home to Indiana to live with his parents.

What could have been the definitive look at a subject ripe for modern scrutiny quickly turns into a slack, offbeat version of Meet the Parents. Buscemi’s lackluster direction places humorous, highly typical sitcom-esque jokes ahead of all character development and emotional depth.

The screenplay, by first timer James C. Strouse, has at its core the lazy, Hollywoodized version of redemption, but is smothered in a poetic tone-setting of absolute grayness that might have wrought an original film.

Despite assembling a capable insider cast, with Seymour Cassel and Mary Kay Place as Jim’s parents, Liv Tyler is stuck in the continuously dismal role of an overly-attractive small town romantic interest. There’s an honest grit and desperation one feels in the settings, drifting up on screen with cinematic potential until it’s snuffed by contrived moments involving a comic drug bust and a coma. Even Affleck, who has looked to establish himself as a versatile heavy for sometime now, is left squeezing all he can from Jim, only to see the effort amount to nothing per the script and direction.

Buscemi’s next gig, a 2007 remake of Theo van Gogh’s Interview, will be his most widely known and analyzed film as a director to date. Given van Gogh’s controversial and much-discussed murder, this is a vital make-or-break project for the continuation of Buscemi’s second profession. Lonesome Jim is inarguably a deficient work, and unlike his mainstream nonsense as an actor, there’s not much of a reputation constructed for him to repeat it.

-Shawn Wines

Lonesome Jim is not currently playing in Miami theatres, as its scheduled theatrical run has been cancelled.