'Flynt' an absorbing take on a hard-core life

January 8, 1997
Web posted at: 2:20 p.m. EST

From Movie Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- As bio-pics go, "The People vs. Larry Flynt" is definitely not your father's Oldsmobile. I know what you're thinking -- a movie about a man battling for his right to make millions of dollars by publishing often degrading pictures of young women is not the kind of thing that you're going to cough up seven or eight bucks to sit through. And if that was all that was going on in Milos Forman's hilarious and surprisingly engrossing new film, you'd be right to avoid the whole sordid affair. However, Flynt's life is a twisted, free-form dive into some very troubled waters, and, as such, it defies all expectations. I mean, get a load of this plot:

	Movie trailer - 4.7M/132 sec. QuickTime movie
	Movie clip - 1M/29 sec. QuickTime movie

A dirt poor hillbilly starts making and selling moonshine before he's even out of grade school. Years later, after nearly going broke running a truly depressing strip club, he scratches together some cash and publishes his very own porno magazine. A shocking, brutally to-the-point porno magazine. He then becomes a national celebrity when he's taken up on pornography charges by the good citizens of Cincinnati, Ohio. After spending time in jail on those charges, he is released on appeal and is converted to Christianity by the sister of the president of the United States(!). During another trial, an assassin's bullet paralyzes the pornographer from the waist down. This, obviously, is a trying time for him, but he makes it through with the help of his stripper/junkie wife. Soon thereafter, the most powerful religious leader in the country sues him for defamation of character. Later, the wife contracts AIDS and the pornographer carries his battle for free speech all the way to the Supreme Court.

Only in America, as they say ... and that is the point here. The director of "Amadeus" does not immediately jump to mind when considering the story of Larry Flynt, but, in a way, Forman has tackled this type of material before. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is about nothing if not the American social order's attempts to suppress the individual, and Woody Harrelson's charismatic performance as Flynt contains echoes of Jack Nicholson's McMurphy -- the 'bull goose loony' is on the loose, and anyone who doesn't like it would be well advised to get out of the way. Harrelson has always shown a workmanlike skill in his film performances, but here he is given free reign to cut loose. However, for every hysterical confrontation with the likes of Jerry Falwell (comic theatricality being a Flynt trademark), there is a scene containing something verging on tenderness between Flynt and his wife, Althea Leasure.

Althea is played by Courtney Love. (Yes, that Courtney Love ... and you're in for a very rude awakening indeed if you're misreading the billing as Courtney Cox.) I've never been much of a fan of Love's self-obsessed scum junkie histrionics, but this is a powerful, clear eyed performance (at least until clear eyes aren't called for anymore) that verges on a revelation. Love holds the camera like a pro; even the telltale close-ups that normally sink unseasoned actors are handled with an alarming, straightforward honesty. Her quiet scenes with Harrelson are some of the film's top moments -- it would be a welcome surprise if this is just the first hint of a brilliant new career unfolding before us. Those close-ups suggest more than a highly fortuitous stunt casting coup.

The screenplay is full of crackling dialogue and is very tightly structured, quite a surprise considering it comes from the team of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who also wrote Tim Burton's thoroughly aimless "Ed Wood." The courtroom scenes, in particular, have a bizarre, low-brow zing to them. They play like a cross between the National Lampoon and Thomas Payne, with Edward Norton's solid performance as Flynt's bemused lawyer keeping things from straying too far afield. Usually.

The film makes no attempt to sugar coat the realities of being Larry Flynt. How appropriate that the man's claim to fame is a magazine called "Hustler." Harrelson's performance is hard-core redneck, and, thankfully, we're not expected to exalt in Mr. Flynt's accomplishments. There is one unsteady scene in which Flynt pontificates to a paid audience about the relative appropriateness of hot naked ladies in a world where images of war and violence permeate our daily lives, but this is presented as a media circus of Flynt's own devising. In a way, the film argues that that's the whole reason for being Larry Flynt-- to live in a country that gives you every freedom, even if the freedom you choose is to turn your life into its own sideshow. Or to turn the whole world into a tabloid ... whether anybody else likes it or not.

 

Related stories:

• Women protest movie about Hustler publisher - January 8, 1997
• Harrelson tackles 'Flynt' role with gusto - January 1, 1997

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