Julia Roberts is back with a vengeance in an intense film as a Mom dealing with her son’s drug addiction and how it affects her whole family. The opioid crisis is in the news every day. Peter Hedges (About a Boy, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape) wrote the screenplay and directs his real life son, Lucas Hedges, (Boy Erased, Mid 90’s) in a film covering 24 hours of gut wrenching drama. Lucas is in several high profile films this year after his Oscar nominated supporting role in Manchester by the Sea.
Peter Hedges exposes Ben’s addiction as a sickness in this film. He shows it as a disease that is hard to cure. Lack of trust is tantamount when Ben (Lucas) unexpectedly comes home for Christmas when he’s supposed to be in rehab away from the family. You can see Roberts as Holly immediately tense up asking a million questions of the teen to make sure it’s safe for him, as well as the family, for him to be back home.
Roberts gives an emotional love/hate performance that keeps you guessing. Does she love her son or not? What could have possibly happened to make her so hard-nosed. She is nervous trying to be welcoming and loving yet stern about the rules of the household as conditions for him to stay.
The dialogue reveals inklings of incidents from the past why she is so wary of Lucas being in the house with his biological sister and two smaller siblings from her second marriage to Neal,(Courtney B. Vance- The People vs. O.J.Simpson, American Horror Story.) He wants Ben out of the house. It’s Christmas time and everyone’s trying to be nice, but not if Ben strays and relapses. The scene of the family in church is hard to watch. And as the camera follows Ben and Holly walking down the street, Director Hedges lets the audience see the disgust in the faces of the townspeople they encounter. You slowly find out why he’s a pariah in this little Upstate New York community.
Lucas does an amazing job playing well on his way to recovery, being happy to be with his family trying to win them over. He plays Ben tentative, forcing a smile, trying hard to get his Mom to trust him, even though it’s apparent he’s lied before. She forces him to take urine tests to see if he’s clean and watch while he does it. It’s all so emasculating. You really feel for the boy, but slowly begin to understand why she is so hard on this kid. One of the most harrowing scenes is when Holly takes her son to the cemetery to make it clear that he could end up there. She seems so cruel giving him this taste of tough love.
Lucas plays sad and pathetic so well, you can’t help but be drawn into feeling for what he’s going through. He makes it clear he doesn’t feel he belongs anywhere while dealing with his past mistakes.
Holly is devastated when she learns that the dealers she thought he escaped, come back into his life and take the family dog as collateral until he does just one more job. Peter Hedges picks up the pace as Ben’s Mom instinct springs into action to find Ben and save him from total disaster. As Holly, Roberts is frantic, becoming a detective.
Daughter, Ivy, Ben’s sister, (Kathryn Newton- Big Little Lies, Lady Bird, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) helps direct Holly by cell phone into dangerous areas of the city retracing Ben’s steps into his seedy old drug world. After being so distant and cold, Roberts shows the height of fright and emotion, becoming hysterical, desperate to find and save her son before it’s too late.
Writer/Director Hedges does not sugar coat this situation. In the midst of the current opioid addiction crisis, Peter Hedges effectively poses the question in this grim, but very watchable film, “Can Ben ever really come back?”
The dramatic ending is very disturbing. Roberts throws herself into panic mode in the last scene. The film is eye opening because this is a seemingly normal family, perhaps reminiscent of people you know. But addiction to opioids is causing deaths daily. Peter Hedges relies most on showing the sparring relationship of the mother and son, but the presentation makes you care what happens, not only to Ben, but to the rest of the family. Lucas delivers another excellent, performance, but Julia Roberts as Holly struggling with her son gives one that is emotionally charged and compelling. We think it’s her best role in years. Julia is back!
Roadside Attractions 1 hour 43 minutes R
