Cast: Patrick Swayze, Halle Berry, Sabrina Lloyd, Brian Bonsall, Michael Ironside
Director: Darrell James Roodt
Producers: Nicholas Pileggi, Anant Singh, and Gillian Gorfil
Screenplay: Scott Spencer
Cinematography: Mark Vicente
Music: Patrick O'Hearn
U.S. Distributor: Hollywood Pictures
Jack Charles (Patrick Swayze) is a small time crook with a glib answer for every question and two kids in foster care. When his daughter, Kelly (Sabrina Lloyd), escapes from juvenile hall and locates her father, Jack tries his hardest to get rid of her, but she persuades him to look for his son, Eddie (Brian Bonsall), who is being placed in the same unpleasant place she escaped from, where children are handcuffed and abused. Recognizing the conditions Eddie could be subjected to, Jack kidnaps him from the authorities at gun point, then goes on the run with both kids in tow.
If Father Hood is any indication, road pictures have become a worn-out genre. It's a mystery to me why films like this get made. Do we really need to spend ninety minutes following the misadventures of two children and an adult (who often displays less maturity than his offspring) as they run around the country trying to get to know one another? How many hundreds of movies and television shows have had the same plot?
There is little to relieve the tedium of this film, except an impressive performance by little-known actress Sabrina Lloyd. Hopefully, someone will give her a shot in something where she'll have an opportunity to catch someone's attention.
If I had cared about the characters, perhaps the plot implausibilities wouldn't have bothered me as much, but no one in this film manages to grab more than a token amount of sympathy -- especially not Jack, who is an annoying, arrogant jerk. Give Patrick Swayze credit (if you want to call it that) for playing this guy with the right amount of sleaze to get the audience to actively dislike him. Unfortunately, when he turns over a new leaf (as is inevitable), it's tough to accept.
The two kids have their moments. Actually, I should say that Lloyd's Kelly has her moments. Eddie, as played by Brian Bonsall, is pretty much a nonentity. The script tries aggravatingly hard to manipulate the audience into sympathizing with them. Movies of substance rarely resort to such blatant emotional trickery.
Father Hood comes complete with a social message that's as old as Dickens' Oliver Twist. Foster care in the United States has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years as more and more cases of abuse are revealed. While I would support a movie that grapples with the problem sensitively and intelligently, this is not that film. It takes a good-guy, bad-guy approach to the situation and presents it from a decidedly singleminded viewpoint designed to stir the viewer's emotions, not make him or her think about the seriousness of what's going on. In fact, the low quality of Father Hood may actually sabotage the message it's trying to get across.
Recently, an Italian film called Il Ladro di Bambini (Stolen Children) covered a lot of the same ground. That too was a road film featuring an older, somewhat callous guardian and the two children he was entrusted with. The similarities extend no further than plot structure and character background, because Il Ladro di Bambini is an excellent feature, and watching it only magnifies Father Hood's numerous faults.
There may not have been many like me, but I was actually impressed by Patrick Swayze's performance in City of Joy. I thought he took a big step towards advancing beyond his popcorn-and-soda reputation. But with the release of this ugliness, I may have to admit being mistaken. And "mistake" is a key word here, because that's exactly what this entire production is.
© 1993 James Berardinelli