If you can survive the first twenty minutes, you are as patient (and as dumb/curious)as I. You will not be justly rewarded for the patience. Nolte is a drunk in real life, so does a good job as a reprobate in this movie. All the sappy reviews aside, this movie is a dud, something you might find behind a horse in a parade. This is a two hour movie, 90% was space filler...dead mom, ex-wife, pointless daughter scenes, dysfunctional dad, girlfriend, cemetery scene, etc. The writer should be indicted for wasting our time. Somebody used a software "how to make a movie" application, and this show came out the other end. I watched it for free. Someone owes me for the time spent.

The sheriff of a frigid New Hampshire town investigates a shooting. The apple does not fall far from the tree. That is what the title refers to. Raised by an abusive father, a man turns out to be a lousy husband and father. The script is sloppy and disjointed, with too many secondary characters crammed in. It moves in fits and starts, but never really settles in and finishes with a whimper. Nolte has some good moments but too often seems to be sleepwalking, delivering his lines in a barely intelligible low growl. Spacek and Dafoe are fine, but neither gets much screen time. Coburn is interesting if a bit too cartoonish in his Oscar-winning role of the father from hell.

Affliction, written and directed by the great Paul Schrader from a novel by Russell Banks, starts off like a story you've heard a thousand times. Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte) is the sheriff of a small New Hampshire town. He's also a heavy drinker with an ex-wife who can't stand him and a daughter who spends her time pouting and asking to go home to her mother. One day a hunting "accident" leaves a wealthy businessman dead, and Wade sees this as his opportunity to prove his worth to his family, his town and himself. Under the hands of Schrader though, someone who has never taken the safe road as a filmmaker, this small town neo-noir thriller turns into a wrenching study of a deeply disturbed individual.What began as an intriguing mystery instead takes a descent into madness, unraveling this man and exposing the brutality that has long been dormant, waiting underneath the surface for the right circumstances to come about. Whitehouse is subtly picked apart by small disturbances, like a gnawing tooth ache and his ungrateful, unloving daughter, that Schrader intelligently weaves into this building sense of aggression and frustration. By the time his daughter refuses to get a Big Mac because her mother says it's bad for her, the audience is down to their last nerve the same way that Whitehouse is. It's an incredible display of bringing the viewer into the mind of it's main character, which builds to a final act that is shattering and terrifying.Schrader's script is immaculately staged here, the kind of intelligent writing where there isn't a single wasted moment. The first hour of the film is almost all character development, which services everything perfectly. It's all building the sense that things are coming to a dramatic climax, where every path, no matter how large or small, ultimately leads to one destination. As these minor distractions plague on him, Whitehouse continues his investigation into the death, but what takes a more center stage as the film progresses is his chaotic relationship with his father, portrayed by James Coburn. We start to see that it's this father/son dynamic that has made Whitehouse such a disturbed individual, his father being a terrifying bastard of a man who abused him as a child while he drank himself into short-tempered rages.In this dynamic, Affliction starts to become a study of what kind of impact that relationship can have on the development of a person, that can grow inside of him and change the course of who he is to become. Is Whitehouse a bad man at heart, or was he made that way by his father? He seems good when we first meet him, trying his hardest despite his character faults, but as he goes down this descent the audience is left to wonder if the father makes the man, if a different patriarch could have led him down a path much less dark. Coburn is a terrifying force here, a man who makes you uncomfortable from the moment he steps into the room. Even when he's not in a rage, you can feel it in the air, the fear that it can come at any moment. It's a palpable sensation that anyone with a short-tempered father can immediately relate to. Casting this man was a hard task for Schrader, as he had to find someone who could make the intimidating Nick Nolte quake in his boots, and there couldn't have been anyone more suited for the job than Coburn.Nolte's performance likewise is a work of art and takes us so thoroughly down this road to darkness that Whitehouse experiences. He makes you sympathize with him, perhaps even empathize as I most certainly did, which makes his explosion, his unbridled descent all the more wrenching. There's a scene where he lets loose, completely explodes on a tirade about how this town needs him, that is one of the most shockingly chilling moments I've experienced in some time. It leaves you unable to move, a towering display of machismo in the face of potential emasculation. This is what the film boils down to in a lot of ways, the things that make a man and what being a man really means.Interestingly, the story is told from the outside perspective of Whitehouse's brother Rolfe, played by the always great Willem Dafoe. Instead of having the story told through the eyes of Wade, instead we see it all as Rolfe looking back, filled with an eerie sense of remorse that he wasn't able to stop what was coming. Dafoe only appears physically on screen for about ten or fifteen minutes, but you can feel his presence looming over the picture the whole way through, as we occasionally hear him through voice-over. His intriguing voice captures the audience, giving Affliction a troubling, almost poetic neo-noir feel that broods while the characters explode. It's the perfect contrast to the towering work delivered by Schrader and his actors on screen. This is a shattering picture.

With a cast headed by James Coburn, Nick Nolte, Willem Dafoe & Sissy Spacek, you might expect a tour-de-force in screen drama. Well; you'll be disappointed.This item was pulled from the bran-tub. Suspiciously, it came in one of those very thin plastic cases which usually betoken a crap movie, but for £1 it seemed worth a try. The case didn't deceive.Set in small town New Hampshire, USA, during the winter, we are treated to a dismal and rather confusing drama. Once more, the lighting crew appear to have gone on strike and even the interiors of buildings are places of unremitting gloom. The script may be 'realistic' but it is largely boring. Most of the dialogue is spoken in a hushed and hurried way that is frequently unintelligible. You strain to hear a clue that was never there, or a snippet of conversation that wasn't worth your attention. Nick Nolte's character has family problems. Yes; he's a dead-beat dad. Aren't they all? His own father (played by Coburn) was himself a violent man and - well; the abused eventually turns abuser.Partway through, a homicide bi-line appears in the form of a suspicious shooting. Is it an accident, or is it murder? It begins to look as though the movie will finally develop into something. 'A Perfect Plan' comes to mind, or even 'Fargo'. But not so. This issue just limps confusedly along with the dead-beat dad plot to no particular outcome whatsoever. It's also rather curious how many movies depict small-town America as cultural black-holes riven by disillusion, drink, and unhappiness. Can't humans ever be comfortable together? Just occasionally there are moments - all too brief - of tension, drama and tenderness, but for the very most part it's just a 109 minute dirge.The movie begins with a long-winded and convoluted intro narrated by Willem Dafoe (who plays Nolte's little brother) and ends in a similar way, but this time with a reproval of universal male domestic-violence that is as heavy-handed as it is plain wrong. It's a piece that might have been written by the most embittered, self-righteous feminist. And it absolutely stinks.The politically-correct with no discernment will love this crap. Those with a more balanced outlook will see it for what it is.