Free | Current TV
Posted: 1/1/0001
I caught GenArt s advanced screening of The Good Guy, an indie feature that premiered at last year s Tribeca Film Festival. Marketed to the masses as a clever RomCom, The Good Guy actually goes a little further than that. Set in the context of urban Wall Street twenty-somethings and their dating rituals, the love triangle created here is more a tool used to convey the fatal flaws of the main character, Tommy (Scott Porter, Friday Night Lights ) than a main feature of the film.
We meet Tommy at the end of his story and watch his story revealed in reverse. The writer/director, Julio DiPietro, uses the technique so that the audience is initially aligned with Tommy, whose negatives are slowly revealed throughout the film. DiPeitro is influenced in part by the The Good Solider, a 1915 novel - also read by Beth s (Alexis Bledel, Gilmore Girls and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) bookclub in the film - told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order. The director also makes use of the device of the unreliable narrator, opting for a gradual reveal of a version of events that differs substantially from that which is first offered to the audience.
At first the viewer is led to believe that Tommy is different, resisting the career path of his boss, a skeletal Andrew McCarthy who appeared to be channeling a combination of George Steinbrenner and John McEnroe for his art as the trader s boss. It appears as though the viewer is watching an internal struggle of morality until it is slowly revealed that morality was never in the picture. With pills and prostitutes making guest appearances, we are introduced to a world where evil lurks only under the surface of a clean-cut prep school kid.
Aside from Ana Chlumsky (as Lisa), who is best know for her role in My Girl, the actors Porter, Bledel, and Bryan Greenberg as Daniel, the third wheel in the love triangle, are all graduates of the small screen. They all seem to be auditioning for their big screen approval (ye