The Power of Few (2013)

THE POWER OF FEW – rated ‘R’ / one hour and 36 minutes / directed and written by Leone Marucci / actors: Christopher Walken, Christian Slater, Q’orianka Kilcher, Anthony Anderson, Jesse Bradford, Jordan Prentice

Sadly, the power of a few interesting scenes are not enough to carry the weight of this fragmented story.

Weak writing, over-acting, and sluggish pacing issues plague this film that gives the Rashomon-treatment to a story about the theft of the Shroud of Turin, and a dozen strangers whose lives intersect because of it.

Christopher Walken’s role as a charismatic homeless man is a hoot and a half, easily the most interesting character on display, but he’s done it before (ENVY and perhaps AMERICAN SWEETHEARTS), and with better writing to support him. In POWER, he is an ex-news anchor, who had a breakdown, and now walks the streets with his dwarf-friend named Brown, played alright by Jordan Prentice. Prentice was fantastic in the film IN BRUGES. In this one though, he isn’t given much to work with, and the good moments are spread really thin.

This film borrows too heavily from other films without providing anything substantial of its own. It wants to be Rashomon-meets-Pulp Fiction-meets-21 Grams-meets- Crash, but it ends up being Vantage Point-meets 2 Days in the Valley with a dash of Pay It Forward.

This is a story told in vignettes, small dramatic scenes. Usually that would work to increase the pace of the story and decrease the penalty for bad performances, right? But here, the bad performances outnumber the good, and they just go on and on. So: notsogreat.

Christian Slater is alright in this, but he’s partnered with a woman (Nicky Whelan) that just isn’t very convincing as the bad-ass loose-cannon she is supposed to be, and she just drags everything down with her. I dislike Anthony Anderson in this for the same reason, he’s supposed to be this hard, street-thug with a face tattoo and a quick temper, but I’m just not intimidated by him. At all.

There are other issues, but I’ll just end this and say that this is a sub-par film and without the Walken-enticement, it’s probably not worth your time or money. Not that it was jaw-droppingly awful, because it wasn’t. It was… alright. But I’d like to think you have better things to do with your time than watch flawed mediocrity for an hour and a half.

Alright then. How ’bout a nickel?