Ain't it Cool News - December 27th, 2000
MORIARTY'S CHRISTMAS RAMPAGE Begins With  O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? And THE GIFT!!
(snipped for Keanu/'The Gift' content)

Hey, everyone. Moriarty here with some rumblings From The Lab

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I'm glad we got one of the movies on my list out of the way at the Butt-Numb-A-Thon, actually, and I've spent the last few weeks mulling over Sam Raimí's  groovy new thriller THE GIFT. I was surprised how mixed the reaction was at the Alamo after this one screened. Personally, I had a great time with it, and it's grown on me as I thought it over. It's everything I wanted from this summer's WHAT LIES BENEATH, with a sly, simple script by Billy Bob Thorton and Tom Epperson, whose previous collaborations (A FAMILY THING and ONE FALSE MOVE) have both been smart and solid, if not spetacular. They continue in that tradition with the story of Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett), a small-town phychic in the modern south. Recently widowed. she's raising several children on her own, using her particular skills to play social worker on her neighbors.

The film's deceptively structuredwitha  gradual first act that seems to center on Valerie Barksdale (Hilary Swank) and her abusive husband Donny Barksdale (Keanu Reeves). Annie encourages Valerie to leave her husband, incurring Donnie's wrath in the process. Swank does good work as the bruised wife, but it's not that deep a role. Surprisingly, it's Reeves who really shines here. He deserves much credit for his menacing work, and he manages to play Donnie with shades, not just simple one note malice. Another of Annie's regular clients is the disturbed Buddy (Giovanni Ribisi), a mechanic with dark secrets and a chidlike presence. Ribisi's  played misfits before, but it's never really paid off like this. He does affecting work, the kind that makes you reassess an actor. He's fiercely dedicated to Annie, and when Donnie starts to threaten her, Buddy puts himself in the middle. If you had told me that the single biggest crowd reaction out of the entire 24 hour BNAT crowd would come from a scene between Reeves and Ribisi, I wouldn't have believed it.

The film reveals its true agenda, though, when local girl Jessica King (Katie Holmes) vanishes. Her fiance Wayne (Greg Kinnear), principal of the local  elementary school, is destroyed by her disappearance, as is her father, and as a last resort they turn to Annie for help despite the skepticism of the town's sheriff (JK Simmons). When she gets involved, she finds it's not something she can just dabble in. She gets pulled into the very heart of the mystery, and as the other two storylines collide, everything comes together in a delicious old-fashioned creepfest. THE GIFT doesn't break any new ground in the suspense genre, but it succeeds at everything it tries. The whodunnit aspect of the film is handled well,a nd even though I'd already read and reviewed the script for the film, the guilty party did a great job of making me forget. It's a deft aleight of hand, something many filmmakers seem to have forgotten how to do.