For pure shock value, few scenes from this year’s movies can equal the moment in The Paperboy when a swim-suited Zac Efron suffers a jellyfish sting on a Florida beach and, as lovely young things flutter around him, Nicole Kidman pushes through to cauterize Efron’s wounds by squatting and urinating on them. “If anyone’s gonna piss on him,” Kidman announces, “it’s gonna be me.” Wretched excess, or divine decadence? A racially charged drama, or a demented, deadpan comedy? A wallow in depravity, or a demonstration of the seductive appeal of transgressive behavior? Director Lee Daniels’ film may be some or all of the above. It is hard to categorize and, for people who get on its weird, fluctuating wavelength, harder to resist. (READ: Mary Corliss’s and Mary Pols’ reviews of Precious) What must be said about Daniels’ first film since his award-winning Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire is that, unlike many movie excursions into the racial tensions of 50 years ago, The Paperboy actually has a pulse; it revels in the lure of the lurid. Working with Pete Dexter to adapt his 1995 novel to the screen, Daniels barges into that mythical land, the American South, takes root in the sins of the flesh and the soul, and digs deep, down and dirty. Jack James (Efron), the younger son of the local newspaper publisher (Scott Glenn) in Moat County, is charming and callow, overshadowed by the reputation of his brother Ward (Matthew McConaughey), who’s become a big-city journalist. Ward is back in Moat, with his black-reporter friend Yardley (David Oyelowo), to investigate the murder trial of a local sheriff. Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack), the backwoods layabout who is on Death Row for the crime, had an airtight alibi that was not allowed into evidence. Now Charlotte Bless (Kidman), a jailbird Jenny who courted Hillary while he was in prison, says she has two boxes of letters that will afford the convict a new trial. (READ: Richard Corliss on the late blooming of Matthew McConaughey) People can be attractedImage may be NSFW.
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