Tribeca Film Festival 2012 featured what was perhaps the oddest film I’ve ever seen at a film festival — Francophrenia (or: Don’t Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is), a pseudo-documentary about James Franco’s stint on General Hospital directed by Ian Olds. With The Fixer, Olds and Franco have reteamed for another Tribeca Film Festival movie (something not surprising considering Tribeca’s long obsession with James Franco) and created a film that might be more interesting than Francophrenia but just as tiresome and perplexing.
For what it’s worth, the setup of The Fixer is intriguing. Osman (Dominic Rains) is a “fixer” for journalists in Afghanistan — something of a cultural guide — who moves to the small northern California town of one of his colleagues because he is under the false impression that the local newspaper has a job for him. The only job the paper can offer him is $50 a week to write the crime blotter. Osman is living with his colleague’s mother, Gloria (Melissa Leo), who also is one of the local sheriffs. Between his desire to make his crime blotter assignment something more substantial and his natural curiosity, Osman is soon entrenched in the small-town seediness of the community and befriends Lindsay (James Franco), a curious local who may or may not be mixed up in some serious business.
However, The Fixer never really makes a case for why Osman would get so emotionally involved in this community beyond his curiosity. Several scenes feature Osman hanging out with Sandra (Rachel Brosnahan) and a group of experimental theater actors. Aside from Osman being sexually interested in Sandra, these scenes have little to do with the actual plot and seem to just be in the movie to pad at the length to an overlong 106 minutes. The mystery that Osman tries to solve isn’t intriguing, and the movie gives no explanation why Osman even cares so much about a community that seems largely indifferent to his presence. The locals are certainly odd, but not odd in an intriguing or entertaining sense like the small-town eccentrics in movies made by David Lynch or the Coen brothers. The relationship between Osman and Gloria is also confusing, because at points she accepts and encourages him to get involved in the town’s dark secrets and in other cases she tells him to stay away.
Aside from a few nice glimpses of the nature of northern California, there is really nothing of worth here. While it’s obvious that Franco and Olds enjoy working together — Olds has edited a number of Franco’s projects — The Fixer is a waste of both men’s talents. Rains also deserves better because he’s a fine actor in a movie that has no real reason to exist. In fact, the little we find out about Osman’s life in Afghanistan sounds so much more fascinating than the plot of this movie. Why not make a film about that life, not this one? At least Osman’s life in Afghanistan had purpose and intrigue.
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