Six Ways to Sunday

Music-video auteur Adam Bernstein wrote and directed this moody, lethargic tale of a teenager headed toward hell in a handbasket. Eighteen-year old Harry (indie up-and-comer Norman Reedus) spends his days flipping burgers and his nights keeping his protective, housebound mother (Deborah Harry) company. But when hophead homeboy Arnie (Adrien Brody) hooks him up with some small-time Jewish gangsters, the young goy learns he has a talent for breaking noses. He starts earning big bucks, then falls for his new boss's crippled maid Iris (Nadja's Elina Löwensohn). For some reason, Harry's mom, a former lounge singer, has no problem with his being a hired killer but is livid about his girlfriend.

Based on Charles Perry's novel Portrait of a Young Man Drowning, this film has a hip, neo-noir look and some impressive acting that's dimmed by molasses-slow pacing, clumsy dialogue, and heavy-handed Oedipal content. Reedus is like Leo DiCaprio's dark twin, and Brody is electrifying, but Ms. Harry's performance is dull as dishwater and redeemed only by the Blondie songs in the soundtrack, which remind us that she really was something else . . . in her day. Screens at the Copley Place Friday, September 18 at 7:20 and 9:30 p.m. and Saturday, September 19 at noon and 2:30 and 5:30 p.m.

-- Peg Aloi

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Film Festival Feature Films

| The Witman Boys | The Cruise | Confessions of a Sexist Pig | Melting Pot | Pleasantville | Clay Pigeons | Waking Ned Devine | Blood, Guts, Bullets, & Octane | My Name is Joe | Six Ways to Sunday | The Theory of Flight | A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries | Down in the Delta | Children of Heaven | I Married a Strange Person | 20 Dates | Bandits |

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More Boston Film Festival information, film descriptions, and show times

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