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| Nick Stahl in Eye of God |
Cast: Martha Plimpton, Kevin Anderson, Nick Stahl, Richard Jenkins, Margo Martindale, Mary Kay Place, Hal Holbrook. Screenplay: Tim Blake Nelson. Cinematography: Russell Lee Fine. Production design: Patrick Geary. Film editing: Kate Sanford. Music: David Van Tieghem.
A solid drama about a crime in a small Oklahoma town, Tim Blake Nelson's debut as a feature film director, Eye of God, is among other things a piercing look into Bible Belt religiosity. Martha Plimpton plays Ainsley, a waitress in the barely there town of Kingfisher, who has struck up a correspondence with a man in the state prison, Jack Stillings (Kevin Anderson). When he's released he heads for Kingfisher, where he's soon married to Ainsley. While in prison, he got religion, and is bent on making her go to church with him. She doesn't care for it, and before long his insistence on having his way drives them apart: When she gets pregnant he insists that she not leave the house. Then she befriends 14-year-old Tom Spencer (Nick Stahl), a shy loner, and their lives intersect in calamitous fashion. But in the film this narrative line is fragmented into flashbacks from the moment police find Tom, covered in blood, wandering alone on a road at night. The nature of the crime and the identity of the victim are cleverly withheld until all the pieces of the story are assembled. But the real strength of the film lies in the performances, not only of Plimpton, Anderson, and Stahl, but of such estimable character actors as Richard Jenkins, Margo Martindale, and Hal Holbrook, playing people who have their own problems that color their responses to the crime.
