Sharp Corner
Director Jason Buxton
110 mins
Sharp Corner is a quiet drama that follows a married couple (Ben Foster and Cobie Smulders) as they move into a new home in the countryside, only to discover that the road beside their home is prone to serious and, at times, deadly car accidents. While mother Rachel, a professional psychiatrist, fears that their young son Max (William Kosovic) will develop issues after being exposed to the horrific accidents, father Josh develops a near obsession with the accidents. A reserved and small man in his daily life, the accidents he witnesses give him an opportunity to be a hero, something he’s never been to anyone.
While this film does work in tandem with another car crash focused film (and a personal favourite) Crash from David Cronenberg, writer-director Jason Buxton chooses to ground Sharp Corner in a much more familiar reality. Unfortunately this does seem to hamstring the film, as while in more adventurous and ambitious films a descent into madness can be a much more terrifying and endless spiral. But here we know the limits that the filmmaker is willing to take the concept, and it never feels like it’s fully exploring the possibilities presented. This is made even more frustrating with the casting of Ben Foster, who plays the role with a fantastic restraint while never losing that intensity and depth Foster always carries behind his eyes. We are always expecting something bigger to happen, for a level of depravity or madness that the film is unwilling to take us to.
Foster is really great in the feature, but is let down by writing which seems to stall out and hold back the character from bursting out of his shell until the final ten minutes. The writing also holds back Smulders character, he comes across as over-protective and unreasonable even before Josh’s obsession takes hold. The cast is small and the film is very contained, so the faults in the few characters we have stand out, and her lack of depth represents many of the faults with the film. While it takes it’s time with developing Josh’s descent, it neglects to show us the rest of the world he lives in, and uses shorthand and cliche to show why Josh chooses the path he does.
The film ultimately comes across as a clumsy and ham-fisted commentary on modern masculinity. Josh, demure and dismissed, seizes upon his opportunity to “man up” with complete disregard to the people this toxic desire harms. Both the people in the car accidents and the people in his life are decimated by Josh’s decisions, and the closing moments of the film amplify the messaging of how such toxicity can still be celebrated in a broken world. It’s a great ending to a film that is spinning it’s wheels and repeating itself for much of it’s run time, and had the ending instead been but step two of a ten step descent into hell, the film could have cut to the bone. Unfortunately the film lacks the bite to really make it’s commentary stick with you.