That's Show-Biz

Two odd docs about provocateurs: 

THE ACT OF KILLING (B) - This one is flat-out bizarre. It's Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary about the mid-1960s slaughter of communists in Indonesia, as seen today through the eyes of the government soldiers who carried out the mass killings.

It's fascinating yet unsatisfying. For some reason, the former murderers are being asked to re-create the killings for some local B-movie projects. At times they portray themselves (for example in gangster outfits); at other times, they become the victims. This gimmick is apparently intended to shock the audience while evoking some remorse in the perpetrators. But what was intended to be a profound examination of the human psyche and the concept of reconciliation often just comes off as hokey.

This is, at times, a beautifully shot film, with bright colors, glinting sun and showgirls dancing out of the mouth of a giant fish replica. And Oppenheimer is definitely on to something here. I just don't think he gets to the core of the matter. To quote Billy Bragg: Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone?

EVOCATEUR: THE MORTON DOWNEY JR. MOVIE (B-minus) - This documentary takes on a fascinating subject, with much drama and intrigue to be mined. And while it faithfully chronicles the rise and fall of one of the first of the right-wing talk-show brutes, the three directors here are out of their depth, turning a very human story into a pop-culture cartoon (literally at times).

Downey burst onto the scene in 1987 -- getting within spittle distance of his guests to tell the pablum-puking liberals to zip it -- and became an instant sensation. He was a loudmouth and a bully, kicking wimpy guests off his set and inciting his lynch-mob of a crowd. (One sharp observer, in reviewing this film, suggests that the audience members whom Downey drew to his Secaucus, N.J., studios presaged the neanderthal Internet trolls who now pollute comment sections.) Downey was the ringleader of a patently offensive, low-information circus, and little effort was made to pretend this wasn't all staged. He made Jerry Springer's subsequent schtick seem like "Romper Room" by comparison. And it all burned out within two delirious years, with Downey dumped from the air and disgraced after he falsely claimed to have been attacked by skinheads in an airport bathroom -- a bizarre cry for help that echoed the Tawana Brawley episode that he himself had exploited repeatedly for maximum ratings.

The filmmakers hammer away at Downey's daddy issues, but never convincingly so. From a roundtable of his former inner circle, we get reliable first-person accounts from inside the Dukakis-era maelstrom. One old colleague, who worked with him in the 1970s on the staff of Sen. Edward Kennedy's office, offers sharp insights into Downey's volatile personality and his various quirks, such as his Thurston Howell sartorial flourishes.

The filmmakers throw a lot at us, but they fail to construct a consistent narrative. The graphic-novel-type animation segments, used for flashbacks, distract from the matter at hand. A time magazine cover of Downey Sr. recurs repeatedly, with Pop shaking his head disapprovingly at his tormented son. Women in the animated segements are invariably depicted as horny teens or stripper-types flashing their panties. It's offensive and immature -- although it is in keeping with Downey's boorish persona: we're told that he once asked a female intern to hold his penis while he peed, and at the height of his fame, he dumped his wife for a woman less than half his age.

A few talking heads are welcome: Chris Elliott, who parodied Downey on David Letterman's late-night show; contemporary daytime talker Sally Jessy Raphael; and attorney Gloria Allred, who admits to a sexual buzz between her and Downey. In a clever move, Elliott and others give dramatic readings from Downey's 1969 book of pedantic poems, in the days when he was going by the name Sean to distinguish himself from the beloved Irish tenor who gave him his name.

Some final scenes show a disgraced and dying Downey (lung cancer from the four-packs-a-day habit he bragged about) trying to make amends for having glamorized smoking, though we don't get much contrition for his significant role in dragging the cultural conversation into the gutter. The sight of an emaciated former brute breaking down on Larry King's show is moving, but that flash of emotion only highlights the overall limitations of this messy mash-up of a movie.