The Son of No One

What is immediately striking in THE SON OF NO ONE is Dito Montiel's sublimely perfected sense of filmmaking. The way he renders New York City is fantastic, the streets, the cops, the way people talk, the tone. What strikes you after a while though, is the complete idiocy of Montiel's script: a shoddy piece of ridiculousness spurred by wanton events. In the film, a cop, Jonathan White (Channing Tatum) attempts to cover up his past. White used to go by "Milk", as the only white kid in a building filled with blacks. With his friend Vincent, the two forged a friendship. But Milk killed a man in self defense as a kid, and then killed another man in order to protect his dog. These two extremely unlikely events aren't handled well by Montiel, and they seem even more ridiculous within the scope of the film, to the point where they belong in a comedy movie about a kid who just can't stop mistakenly killing people (like in 2011's TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL). But, as the son of a NYC cop who was gunned down years ago, Milk was protected by Charles Sanford (Al Pacino), a detective and friend of his felled father. The story was covered up, and White became a cop, married to the unbearable Katie Holmes. But now anonymous notes are being sent to the police station, referencing two murders by a cop in the department. White suspects his old friend Vincent, while Sanford and suspects White himself. A news reporter played ridiculously by Juliette Binoche promotes the stories in her watchdog-esque newspaper, and ensuing are a series of decisions that White has to make in order to protect his name. But Montiel's script handles the whole thing in a way that accentuates the ridiculousness he's trying to sell you, and uneven performances promote Montiel's weaknesses as a director. There are some truly dramatic scenes, but they are uniformly bookended by bad ones.

★★