Levity Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)April 3rd, 2003
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One would hardly expect the directorial debut of Men in Black and Charlie's Angels scribe Ed Solomon to be...umm...any good. But Sundance opener Levity is blessed with so much talent in front of and behind the camera, I'm pretty sure even Joel Schumacher wouldn't be able to make a total mess of it. After about 40 minutes, it's pretty clear what's going to happen to each of the film's four main characters, but the journey they take you on is more than entertaining enough.
Levity's main character is Manuel Jordan (Billy Bob Thornton, Monster's Ball), who, as the picture opens, is being sprung after spending 23 years in the pokey. Manuel, who accidentally killed a teenage checkout boy in a convenience store robbery, doesn't feel he's suffered enough and doesn't want to be paroled. With long gray hair and nowhere to go, Manuel is a little like The Man Who Wishes He Wasn't There.
Manuel returns to Chicago (played by Montreal) with the hopes of anonymously connecting with his victim's older sister, Adele Easley (Holly Hunter, Moonlight Mile), so they can both get some kind of closure in their lives. Fate and/or convenient timing at a pay phone (Levity is opening the same weekend as Phone Booth, mind you) land Manuel a gig with Miles Evans (Morgan Freeman, Dreamcatcher) and his Community House soup kitchen, whose only clear means of income comes from a most unusual source. Miles charges the young, mostly rich suburban patrons of a nearby rave club $15.00 for safe late-night parking, so long as they agree to sit through one of his 15-minute fire-and-brimstone sermons.
Working the Community House door is how Manuel meets Levity's fourth spoke, Sofia Mellinger (Kirsten Dunst, The Cat's Meow), a quick-witted girl with cute mittens and an unyielding drive to spend most of her life in a drug-induced stupor. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that these four characters are all transients who are afraid of being judged because each of them knows they've really fucked up at some point in their lives. Levity almost tricked me by making like it was going to turn into Dangerous Minds at the halfway mark, but thankfully that was just a passing vibe.
While I'm not sure how he chose his film's title, Solomon got the idea for Levity's story while tutoring inmates at a juvy prison. One of the kids carried around a photo of his victim, just like Manuel does here. Levity is one of those molasses-paced flicks that is much more meditative than action-packed. Solomon's dialogue is his strongest contribution, though the overall effect is greatly aided by a lovely yet somewhat repetitive score from Mark Oliver Everett (aka E from Eels), as well as work from two of the industry's most reliable technical contributors - five-time Best Cinematographer nominee Roger Deakins (A Beautiful Mind) and double Best Editor winner Pietro Scalia (Black Hawk Down).
1:40 - R for language
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