'Good Boy' Hanway Films Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment The premise of Good Boy, the new drama-dark-comedy-thriller by Corpus Christi helmer Jan Komasa, is certainly provocative. A young hoodlum, Tommy (Anson Boon), is snatched off the streets of London one night, and wakes up chained in the basement of a family man, Chris (Stephen Graham), who intends to rehabilitate him. Initially, Tommy resists, as anyone might. But his feelings about his predicament grow more complicated the longer he's in Chris' charge. Good Boy The Bottom Line More bark than bite. Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Centrepiece)Cast: Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Anson Boon, Kit Rakusen, Monika Frajczyk, Savannah SteynDirector: Jan KomasaScreenwriter: Bartek Bartosik 1 hour 50 minutes If the concept has a way of grabbing one's attention, however, the execution proves too uneven to leave a lasting impression. Though Good Boy gets by for a while on the strength of its performances and the sheer oddness of its plot, the flimsiness of its characters drains the film of energy long before its 110 minutes are up. Related Stories Movies Toronto Awards Analysis: Like It Or Not, Sydney Sweeney Has Joined the Best Actress Oscar Race for 'Christy' Movies Sydney Sweeney Details Her 'Christy' Physical Transformation: 3 Months of Training and Chick-fil-A At first, Good Boy has the trappings of horror. The room Tommy is imprisoned in is one of those grimy, queasily lit cellars especially beloved by cinematic serial killers, and located beneath a sprawling countryside home with no neighbors around for miles. His captor, Chris, fits the trope of the monster hiding in plain sight. He might appear meek at first glance, with his lumpy sweater vest and mousy toupee, but his hulking shoulders, meaty hands and tendency to ask unsettling questions about "distinguishing marks," of the sort that might be used to ID a dead body, all serve as implicit threats. Chris is the attentive husband to Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough), a figure so gaunt and pale she seems almost more a ghost than a living woman. Their son is Jonathan (Kit Rakusen), whose milk-fed sunniness seems both like a welcome oasis in all this gloom and a suspicious anomaly. (Is he perhaps too chipper?) Rounding out the unhappy home - two times a week, anyway - is Rina (Monika Frajczyk), an undocumented Macedonian housekeeper who's been half-persuaded and half-threatened by Chris into taking the job despite her horror at seeing Tommy trapped in the basement. It's clear from Kathryn and Jonathan's reactions to Chris' actions - concerned or curious but hardly shocked - that this is not the first time this clan have found themselves in a situation like this. But if you're waiting for details on who these people are or why they're doing this or what exactly happened last time, Good Boy deliver only vague clues. Nor does the script (written by Bartek Bartosik and co-written by Naqqash Khalid) offer much explanation of who Tommy was before all of this, beyond just another screw-up with a seemingly insatiable appetite for drugs, sex and violence. Good Boy aims for something less specific and more universal, turning its torture-porn-ready concept into a watered-down thought exercise about our conflicting desires for freedom and security, care and independence. Tommy repeatedly describes his ordeal as "torture," which it is. But he also betrays a flicker of hurt when Chris comments on how "impressive" it is that he's "managed to aimlessly float through [his] whole life unnoticed," and what little we see of Chris' home life suggests emotional neglect. If total obedience is the price he pays for an authority figure who actually cares enough to get him the glasses he didn't even know he needed, well, maybe you can see why a boy might be intrigued. On the flip side, while the film does not overtly evoke current politics - striving, instead, to tap into urges more primal than adherence to some party line - it's hard not to read a reactionary conservatism into Chris. At one point, he has the gall to demand an apology from Tommy for lashing out at Kathryn. When Tommy incredulously points out that he's the victim here, Chris clucks like a dad who's not mad, just disappointed. "That's the problem with your generation," he says. "You always tend to gravitate toward some kind of victimhood." It's one of Good Boy's most darkly funny punchlines, if also an obvious one, and it speaks volumes about Chris' worldview. To his eye, Tommy's breach of the unspoken social contract by which we do not fling our soiled bedclothes at people's genteel upper-middle-class wives is a far greater sin than his own theft of Tommy's dignity and liberty. The issue is that if the impulses behind these choices are recognizable in theory, the characters them