DAD CHOKES

Opening at Harkins Camelview at Fashion Square today...

Flag Day--Based on Jennifer Vogel's 2004 memoir Flim-Flam Man, this is roughly the zillionth telling of one of the perennial American dramas: The relationship with the father. The author's often-absent dad, John Vogel, was a career criminal in the '80s with everything from bank robbery to arson to counterfeiting on his record; he was also a sensitive, loving person who sketched, and who introduced his daughter and son to Chopin and marinated steaks.

Sean Penn, who directed and who plays John Vogel, makes us see how both of these personalities can exist, albeit uncomfortably, in one guy. It's one of his most painfully believable performances since his turn in The Falcon and the Snowman back in 1985; like that guy, Penn's John Vogel is one of those people who are both repellently obnoxious and charismatic, somehow at the same time. He's a hustler in the grand Willy Loman tradition, insisting, when asked what he does for a living, that he's "an entrepreneur," with many irons in the fire at any given time.

Penn's daughter Dylan Penn is impressively un-histrionic and sympathetic as the grown-up version of Jennifer, taking over for a couple of first-rate younger actresses who play her earlier vintages. The director's son, Hopper Penn, effectively plays Jennifer's little brother as an adult.

Stylistically, the movie generates superbly convincing period atmosphere, and it has a '70s art-cinema vibe. It's like something by Terence Malick, with lots of leisurely montages cut to melancholy songs and deliberately grainy, home-movie-ish footage, and heavy use of Dylan Penn's voice-over narration. Virtually a catalog of severe family dysfunction, it's a bitterly sad story, but seen strictly in terms of Jennifer's accomplishment, it's a pretty inspirational story, too.

I wondered why Jennifer's beleaguered Mom (Katheryn Winnick) didn't get more sympathy, until her inaction during a crisis about midpoint in the film makes it harder to like her. Overall, though, the movie is yet another illustration of the tremendous, and tremendously unfair, emotional advantage that fathers tend to wield in the family dynamic, and in the Western narrative tradition.