The absolute authority and force of Daniel Day-Lewis carries this movie in the end, and what a pleasure to see his return to the screen. Without him, though, it might have been harder to take this film’s rather redundant, laborious dramatic gestures and its macho-sensitive narcissism. Even with Day-Lewis, in fact, there are tricky moments in the dialogue, and at the end of each of the two big speeches you might imagine a drama teacher saying: “… and … scene!”
Yet Day-Lewis’s instinctive command of the moment and address to the camera – that fascinating theatricality and artifice visible in even his most realist performances – make him endlessly watchable. He is supposed to be playing a former army sergeant here. I’d put his rank higher than that. It is a movie that Day-Lewis co-wrote with his son Ronan, who also directs. It’s about a father coming to terms with his neglect of his son. We must make of that what we will.
