You Don’t Know Jack Movie Review

I've always rather admired Barry Levinson as a director, even during my dislike of certain films. Whether you had iconic classics (Diner, The Natural, or Rain Man), or disasters (Toys, Envy), or something in the middle, his movies have always been teetering on the edge. They are generally in the "just crazy enough to work" category, but sometimes they don't. Whether ultimately hits or misses, you have to wonder going in. Rain Man could have gone wrong, and let's just say that I think many of the films in the lesser category could have gone right.

The daring behind such works is still in play with You Don't Know Jack, a look at Jack Kevorkian's life. Few ideas come to mind more readily when pondering the efforts that could more easily go wrong. From preachy nonsense, to just plain boring, there are countless ways this film could have gone wrong. It avoids all the obvious and varied pitfalls, and only due to the exact combination of people willing to take this seemingly bad bet.

Starting from the first days of Kervorkian's assisted suicides, and giving a fairly comprehensive look at his life and effort through to his incarceration, You Don't Know Jack clearly shows that a lot of us probably don't.

From the strange, somewhat accidental beginnings, to a vision gone perhaps a bit overboard, the film takes us through the moments that don't make headlines. The lows and lows of a man's effort to make a statement with almost nothing on his side.

The politics and morality aside, the film is a biopic displayed exceedingly well, recreating a man for the screen with a sure precision. Here we go back to an ability with conversations reminiscent of Diner, and the soul of character we saw in Levinson's Good Morning, Vietnam.

Right or wrong, there is a somewhat odd man at the helm of this mini-crusade, and whether interviewing patients, sitting in a jail cell, or at one of his many trials, Kevorkian's easy-to-dislike affect comes through surprisingly well.

Pacino is better than he has been in many, many a year, putting Kevorkian on like an old suit, and convincingly portraying a particularly difficult character. A character who loses himself to his convictions, to the point that he acts in ways detrimental to his own cause.

With great support from John Goodman and Susan Sarandon, and fine script behind things by Adam Mazer, things gel and become engaging. Had any element taken a different turn, the whole would have fallen apart, mainly because the subject is simply difficult to enter without feeling forced. The unnecessarily dramatic still wins out at times - for example, the protester in a wheelchair with a sign that reads, "Please Don't Kill Me," who is flanked by the woman who asks if Kevorkian wants to kill everyone with a disability. I have little doubt that these things happened, and the events are perhaps a part of the overall picture that is his life, but they might not be necessary, and are especially difficult to include without crossing the line into overindulgence.

What's curiously fascinating about the film is how little interest it evokes at first glance. Even among those who support Euthanasia, it is hard to imagine a burning desire to find out about the man. Really? Spend a couple of hours with Dr. Death?

It's the interplay that makes it most watchable, whether Jack is talking with his sister, his lawyer, or his "partners in crime," he isn't left alone on screen, and that brings around a fascinating humanity to a character that is ultimately being shown as almost too odd to follow.

Rating:  

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About Marc Eastman

Marc Eastman is the owner and operator of Are You Screening? and has been writing film reviews for over a decade, and several branches of the internet's film review world have seen his name. His reviews have brought him personal praise from the director of a major motion picture, and have been used as required reading in a course at a major University. These priceless rewards, along with just bags of cash, keep him from straying from freelance writing. He is also a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association and The Broadcast Television Journalists Association.

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