Passion Play

" Passion Play"

"As Reported by Dollyforme"

Poor Megan Fox – booted from the Transformers series and reduced to doing shit movies like this one. It is rated R for some hot nude scenes however.

Megan Fox is a girl with angel wings who works at a freak show and if the degree of laughter at the wrong moments and the number of walkouts at the Toronto International Film Festival are any indication, the film will appeal only to her most hardcore fans.

Fans of the genre will know where the film is going the minute Nate (Rourke) is driven to a remote place next to a river by a bad man with a gun to be punished for sleeping with the boss' wife. A red-tail hawk fills the screen and bullets fly but they hit the bad guy. Nate staggers through the brush and stumbles upon a carnival run by flamboyant carny boss Sam Adamo.

There, he meets a beautiful young woman named Annie (Fox) whose abundant charms extend to a genuine pair of wings. At this point, those who don't get it will likely begin to snigger, as many did in the press and industry audience at the Toronto.

Smitten instantly, Nate frees Annie from Adamo's exploitive clutches but no sooner are they back in the city than he's trying to make a deal with Happy Shannon over rights to Annie's potential income as a gorgeous woman with wings.

The inevitable falling out leads to a tussle over the woman and along the way Rourke gets to mime an extraordinarily unconvincing scene of Nate's trumpet playing, and Fox disrobes attractively.

Rourke's rumpled hard-man vulnerability is part of his charm and fans will enjoy his work, as will those who enjoy Murray's ineffably cool line readings. Fox is persuasively shy and hurt, using a soft and whispery voice.

The movie does not really work, as storytelling or drama. But then, it is also impossible to wholly dismiss a film shot by Christopher Doyle or one starring Mickey O’Rourke, Megan Fox and Bill Murray. It tries out a fairly ambitious blend of styles and tones, from the playfully lyric to a magic realist folk tale.

The movie does end on a lovely grace note, the only time in the movie where it achieves the sense of flight and movement the whole movies has tried desperately to create. Unfortunately, by then, it is too little and far too late.