Overnight

Directed by Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith

ThinkFilm Inc.

Everyone loves a “rags to riches” tale. But what about a “rags to riches... and back to rags” tale? Unlike the charming fairytales of innocent childhood, Overnight shows, sudden success can be damning.

This documentary follows the rise and fall of Troy Duffy, a Bostonian bartender who makes an astonishing, life-changing deal with Miramax films. Miramax is so impressed with Troy’s screenplay, The Boondock Saints, that it offers Troy the chance to direct the film with a huge budget and create its soundtrack using music performed by his band. Sitting on top of the world, Troy manages to commit blunder after blunder, mishandling negotiations and alienating his supporters. He eventually loses his deal with Miramax and becomes a pariah in Hollywood.

The movie’s biggest strength is Troy Duffy’s aggravating personality. He alternates between bouts of cruel anger and drunken happiness, while maintaining a deathless, overconfident, holier-than-thou attitude that catalyzes his downfall. Despite his irritating tendency to say the wrong thing to just about everyone, there are elements of appealing humanity in Troy. While cringing at his painful blindness to reality, the viewer wants to smack some sense into him. Yet there is something gripping about his irate desperation and something frightening about the ease with which Troy evolves from confident and optimistic bartender to paranoid resentful tyrant.

The filmmakers have gripping material on hand, and they make good use of it. They choose scenes that effectively highlight the quicksilver personality of Troy; moreover, they mix in just the right dose of other characters’ appearances to temper Troy’s intensity and provide outside perspective. The opening sequence—a montage of images recalling the heady success of landing the deal—is artfully done. Shortly thereafter, however, the time line of the story becomes unclear, and the deluge of names and faces is overwhelming. But that shortcoming is minimized by the ensuing drunken revelry, cursing tantrums, and escalating tensions.

Other than minor editing gripes, this movie is a wonderfully raw portrayal of the dangers of success and self-delusion. But as the end credits scroll by, it is hard not to wonder about the filmmakers. Directed by two of Troy’s former band members, there is a definite undercurrent of bitterness and resentment towards Troy. Is this movie their final guffaw at Troy’s expense, or a noble warning to aspiring moviemakers?

The ending seems to cast Troy in a sympathetic light, an odd shift from the pervasive anti-Troy sentiment of the rest of the movie. Maybe the directors themselves do not know what to feel about their ex-friend. But after watching one-and-a-half hours of Troy’s greedy hoarding and inevitable self-destruction, one hopes that the directors’ finale is an attempt at rising above vengeance and mercenary exploitation. But maybe it’s not, and they simply retained more of Hollywood than they realized.

—Deborah Pan

Closer

Directed by Mike Nichols

Sony Pictures

We all recognize genuine chemistry when we experience it with another person. The few seconds of eye-contact and the flush of emotions, lips that struggle to pronounce words which become lost to passing moments—moments during which you are so locked into the other person that everything seems to go still and time briefly stops. For a few seconds it’s like you breathe in someone else, and from the way he or she looks at you, you recognize that the other person feels just as emotionally exposed as you do.