'Demolition': Good performances bulldozed by trite filmmaking

Demolition, with Jake Gyllenhaal as a New York investment banker whose wife dies in a car crash, deserves credit for trying to be, and do, something different.

Written (and often overwritten) by Brian Sipe, the script was one of those hot entities that popped up on Hollywood's fabled Black List of standout unproduced work. Jean-Marc Vallée, the French Canadian director, eventually latched onto it. He has been on a hot streak, too, having overseen the Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club and the Oscar-nominated Wild.

At the Toronto International Film Festival in September, he told the audience at Demolition's gala premiere that this was "the most rock-and-roll film I've ever done."

For the record, Demolition's soundtrack includes Heart's "Crazy on You," '60s oldies by Eric Burdon and the Animals, and a cover of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," by that seminal California psychedelic garage unit the Chocolate Watchband.

What Vallée really meant, of course, was that the film rocked and rolled in ways his previous work had not. And that's true: There are jumpy, jarring edits, the narrative veers without warning from the here-and-now to the there-and-then, and Gyllenhaal's protagonist - a glazed yuppie by the name of Davis Mitchell, thrown into a state of profound numbness by the loss of his spouse - does stuff that people aren't sure how to respond to.

In the hospital where the body of his wife, Julia (Heather Lind, seen in flashbacks), ends up, Davis feeds quarters into a vending machine and punches the keys for a bag of M&Ms. The candy gets stuck on the dispensing coil, so Davis, a little later, composes a letter to the vending machine company asking for a refund.

In the process, he chronicles the whole grim story that got him to the hospital waiting room in the first place. Then he writes another letter to the vending machine company, and another.

These way-more-than-complaints letters are received and read by Karen Moreno (Naomi Watts), who works in the company's customer service department. In fact, she is the customer service department. She is also in a relationship with her boss, which becomes an issue after she and Davis finally, inevitably, meet.

Karen smokes pot, has a teenage son (Judah Lewis) with a smug and surly face, and finds some kind of spiritual kinship as she starts to spend time with the damaged Davis.

He, meanwhile, in addition to supplying the epistolary narrative device that runs through the movie, has found a new calling: taking hammers and drills and even a bulldozer (purchased on eBay) to the modern and pricey home he had shared with Lisa.

Hence, the title of the movie. And hence, the metaphor - wielding a giant mallet to a life that no longer makes sense.

Demolition isn't short of good performances. Gyllenhaal is wholly committed, Watts radiates an air of sadness and fragility edged with stoner giddiness, Chris Cooper is solid as Julia's grieving dad and head of the high-powered investment firm that employs Davis. As father-in-law, he's understandably concerned, and then angered, by the increasingly bizarre and disrespectful behavior exhibited by the husband of his deceased daughter.

But Demolition plays like a failed iteration of a 1970s angry-misfit movie (think Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces), not like the real thing. Davis' actions feel motivated by the screenwriter's ambitions and influences, not as a manifestation of the grief and shock experienced by his main character.

And the frolicking-on-the-beach montages, the old gent who restores carousels in a dilapidated hall on the boardwalk? What kind of corn is that?

If Demolition is Vallée's "most rock-and-roll film," it is also his most contrived and pretentious. Too bad.

srea@phillynews.com
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Demolition
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée. With Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper, and Judah Lewis. Distributed by Fox Searchlight.
Running time: 1 hour, 40 mins.
Parent's guide: R (profanity, violence, adult themes).
Playing at: Area theaters.