The Gift: Movie Review (2008)

Editor's note: Just plucked this 2000 film from the archives and am publishing it here for the first time. I remember liking it quite a bit. And just look at what's become of Cate Blanchett in the meantime....

Directed by Sam Raimi, written by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson, 112 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published in 2000)

Sam Raimi’s “The Gift,” an old-school, Southern Gothic thriller charged with strong performances, gorgeous cinematography and an involving story that grips from the get-go, is pure pulp entertainment, a movie that’s immanently watchable in spite of its handful of missteps.

As predictable as it is, the film, from a script by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson, nevertheless manages to weave a mesmerizing narrative, one that satisfies in large part because of its superb cast.

At the center of the film is another terrific performance from Australian actress Cate Blanchett, a master actor who consistently delivers performances so transcendent and pure, she lifts whatever film she’s in.

Such is the case in “The Gift.” As Annie Wilson, a young backwater widow who inherited her grandmother’s psychic gift, Blanchett’s quiet intensity grounds a movie that could easily have given itself over to Southern-fried camp. Indeed, she doesn’t play Annie as cinema’s answer to Madame Cleo, the ribald Jamaican Tarot card reader currently dispensing her foot-stomping brand of advice on television. Instead, Blanchett infuses Annie with sensitivity and humility, a mother of three boys who’s fully aware that her gift has the power to change lives.

About those lives--it’s a shame the film doesn’t give Annie a character as interesting as she to work with. Instead, the script is more content to offer her a host of Southern stereotypes, including an emotionally troubled car mechanic (Giovanni Ribisi) whose father abused him as a child, and a battered wife (Hilary Swank) whose violent husband, Donnie (Keanu Reeves, in one of his best performances), swears he will kill Annie if she doesn’t stop meddling in their lives.

Toss into this potent stew a passive aggressive school principal (Greg Kinnear) who’s engaged to the town tramp (Katie Holmes), a woman who eventually winds up naked and chained at the bottom of the town swamp, and the film starts to crank up the heat in a whodunit that plays fair until its final moments, when--inexplicably--Raimi breaks the film’s haunting momentum with divine intervention.

Grade: B+