Not exactly the Brady Bunch (Domestic Disturbance (DVD))

Member Name: george_lazenby

Product:	Domestic Disturbance (DVD)
Date:	20/01/02 (43 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Solid, entertaining, not too violent

Disadvantages: slightly ordinary

In some ways, John Travolta's career after 'Pulp Fiction' looks like someone told him that he had six months to live. He appeared incapable of not working; every time one Travolta vehicle disappeared over the horizon, you knew all you had to do was turn your head and you'd see the next one slowly approaching. What I think is surprising about this is the fact that so few of this endless succession of movies are less than watchable. There have been great movies - 'Get Shorty', 'A Civil Action', the criminally underrated 'Mad City' and 'Broken Arrow' (I should also include 'Face/Off', which I didn't like, but most people did). There have been decent movies - 'Michael', 'The General's Daughter', even the scientology-tinged 'Phenomenon'. Of all his movies of the last ten years, only 'Battlefield Earth' strikes me as unwatchably terrible.

'Domestic Disturbance' is definitely part of the middle-order of movies, not exactly a masterpiece, but a neat little thriller with at least a decent idea, smart performances and a nice sense of place. The genre is resolutely old-hat, that sort of flick for which 'Domestic Disturbance' is probably a fair summary. In the eighties, every other movie seemed to concern the intrusion of some psycho into the settled life of suburbanites - the most famous is the psycho mistress in 'Fatal Attraction', but you couldn't really trust anyone. Your nanny ('The Hand that Rocks the Cradle'), your flatmate ('Single White Female'), the cops ('Single White Female') - anybody could turn out to be a complete mentalist. This film has a similar plot to the best of the bunch: 'The Stepfather', a gleeful assault on American family values, as a charming stepdad turns out to be a total psycho.

This isn't quite as smart: Travolta plays the father of a little tearaway - his ex-wife (Teri Po
lo) is marrying a new man (Vince Vaughn) and Travolta is discomfitted by his son's hostility to his new stepdad. Things are somewhat complicated when the boy sees Vaughn murder an old friend and incinerate his body in a brick factory - despite being less than convinced, Travolta feels he has to stand by his son, a stance which becomes increasingly difficult as Vaughn starts putting the frighteners on the lad, and threatening to off Travolta.

So far, so routine, and 'Domestic Disturbance' never really gets further than providing passable suspense. But Harold Becker, director of other Hitchcockish thrillers like 'Sea of Love' and 'Malice' at least knows how to handle the growing sense of threat and menace with polished professionalism - not a lot happens, but Vaughn's single-minded attempts to ensure that the past remains in the past is properly intimidating. In a way, the film would have been better made at half the budget with a cast of unknowns - it would have been hailed as an indie discovery - but the top-drawer actors (who also include Steve Buscemi in an engaging cameo as Vaughn's hapless victim) at least ensure limousine service.

Vaughn is supremely effective as the villain, and while Travolta seems happy to let his girth do the talking at times, he's very good at things like this. Everything about him - his unfashionable hair, the crap mac he always wears, his slow, deliberate way of talking - it all combines to make him seem like a fundamentally decent man who's nevertheless a bit of a sap, the kind of loser whose pretty wife would ultimately trade him in for the flash, younger out-of-towner.

It's not a long film - a fact which always gets points in this genre, because it means that the film works up a decent head of steam, gets the one silly set-piece out of the way at the end, and sends you home at a reasonable hour. And there are a lot of little details which add up to a fairly co
nvincing whole - the way in which Travolta is always seen drinking soft drinks hinting at alcoholism, the solid setting of a small Maryland seaside community (as someone who used to live near that most genteel and tedious of resorts, I was tickled to see that the town was called 'Southport'), Buscemi's hilariously seedy villain, complaining to the stolidly moral Travolta about his inability to find an adult bookstore.

This is probably the kind of film that you'd be better seeking out in Blockbuster or on the telly in couple of years than trailing out to the multiplex for, but in whatever circumstances you see it, I'd be willing to bet you enjoy it. It's modest, but it's a well-made entertainment free of brutality and melodrama, and given that the only other film on that I hadn't seen was 'Rat Race', I'm pretty sure I made the right choice.

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