A true-life story that traces one woman’s tumultuous relationship with her serially unreliable father, Sean Penn’s Flag Day looks terrific. With its grainy, handheld camerawork and fondness for gloaming, magic-hour light, visually it feels like a cross between Terrence Malick’s Badlands and Barbara Loden’s Wanda. But the film, adapted by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth from a memoir by the journalist Jennifer Vogel, and starring Penn and his daughter, Dylan, makes heavy weather of the story at times.
For all the bold stylistic decisions and visual energy, the actual storytelling tangles itself up in a convoluted, nonlinear structure, depleting some of the thrust and restlessness of the camerawork. Still, as forger, con artist and sometime bank robber John Vogel and his daughter Jennifer, the Penns give committed – and in Dylan’s case exposed – performances. Their real-life relationship brings authenticity to their scenes together; however, this fails to fully anchor some of the more showily histrionic moments.
