November 5, 1993 | Slowly, mesmerizingly, Flesh and Bone unfolds as a dark and brooding drama that rewards your patience with the cumulative impact of a primal myth. A tale of fate and retribution on the backroads of West Texas, it will hold your attention and, perhaps, haunt your dreams.
It begins with a crime of shocking violence, after a farm family opens its door to a lost little boy. Late at night, the farmer, his wife and their young son are murdered by an intruder who opens fire when he finds them unexpectedly awake. Roy Sweeney (James Caan), the intruder, is sorry — but not really that sorry — for the slaughter. He blames it on his son, Arlis, the youngster taken in by the family. It was Arlis’ job, Roy says, to make sure the family was asleep. So it’s Arlis’ fault that they’re dead.
Most of them, anyway.
Flash ahead 30 years or so. The grown-up Arlis (Dennis Quaid) is a taciturn loner who stocks vending machines in West Texas towns. Arlis spends most of his time maintaining a low profile and a steady routine, preferring to be as anonymous as possible. When trouble threatens, he looks the other way. When threats escalate — like, when an angry husband pummels a woman who drops into Arlis’ life — Arlis does nothing. He’s not a coward. It’s just that he knows too well how one thing can lead to another.
With a few deft swipes of allusive dialogue and character detail, writer-director Steve Kloves (The Fabulous Baker Boys) vividly conveys the two things Arlis fears most in life: any sudden disruption of his routine, and any sign that he is truly his father’s son. He eases slightly out of his shell in the company of Kay (Meg Ryan, Quaid’s real-life wife), a spirited young woman on the run from a bad marriage and worse prospects. But even before he dares to think of a future with her, his past reaches out and backhands him.
Twice.
It’s not revealing too much to say Roy shows up again, with a beautiful con-artist protégé (Gwyneth Paltrow). And it comes as no surprise that Roy strongly disapproves of Kay. There’s a good, simple reason for Roy’s smiling but sinister attempts to drive a wedge between her and his son. But, in terms of the story’s mythic underpinning, there’s an even better explanation: The only thing pure evil might fear is the possibility of good. Or, to be more specific, the possibility of his son’s redemption.
With a minimum of overt gesture and a maximum of foreboding nuance, Caan is positively bone-chilling as Roy. And he is never more quietly terrifying than in a long, mercilessly sustained face-off between father and son, where Roy insists on the need to “tie up loose ends.” Arlis realizes he must become the very thing he hates to save the only thing he loves.
Here and elsewhere throughout Flesh and Bone, Quaid gives a performance of riveting intensity and meticulous restraint, suggesting an inferno of flaming emotions barely contained behind a sealed-shut door. Ryan is wonderfully appealing and affecting as the bright light who might lead Arlis out of darkness — if she isn’t extinguished — while newcomer Paltrow radiates a hardboiled, self-centered sensuality that could serve as either lure or lethal weapon.
Flesh and Bone takes a bit longer than it should to reach its powerful conclusion. But it’s well worth the wait.
