Wenders’s Miscast Misfits
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With his craggy, weathered visage, Sam Shepard looks like a perfectly faded cowboy. But the first half of Wim Wenders’s “Don’t Come Knocking” casts him as Howard Spence, a highly paid movie star on the run from creditors who cannot finish their big-budget film without him. As he travels through the western United States in search of his past, Howard is trailed by a bondsman (Tim Roth) looking to recoup the investment of the film’s producers. This plot thread explains Mr. Roth’s presence, which is often only an excessive nuisance, but it obfuscates the reasons why Howard would suddenly decide to look for a life he walked away from 30 years ago.
After he escapes the film set, Howard heads straight to see his mother (Eva Marie Saint, looking as though she could be his girlfriend), whom he hasn’t seen in 30 years. She tells him he has a child, and Howard goes up to Butte, Mont., in search of his former flame (Jessica Lange) and their child, Earl (Gabriel Mann). Conveniently, an attractive blonde (Sarah Polley) with an urn full of her dead mom shows up in Butte. She’s also Howard’s child.
Some of the most enjoyable parts of “Don’t Come Knocking” are the silent moments that follow the angry Earl hitting his cracked-out girlfriend (Fairuza Balk). Ms. Balk, who lives as proof of what might have happened to Angelina Jolie had she stayed married to Billy Bob Thornton, is the only actor properly cast in this film. But she has a small role.
Ms. Lange, who looked so ethereally beautiful in 2003’s “Big Fish,” has had one surgical procedure too many to pass as a sweet rural waitress. One emotional scene toward the end seems designed explicitly to trick her forehead into moving. Lugging her dead mother’s ashes around for most of the film, Ms. Polley acts like the Ghost of Trysts Past, and Mr. Mann has trouble finding a scene he can’t overplay.
There are some beautiful shots of the American West in “Don’t Come Knocking,” but they jar against the human discord of the cast. In several moments, the film comes close to an emotional breakthrough, but some strange insertion of showmanship, or odd juxtaposition, brings it all crashing down again.
When Mr. Roth’s character catches up with him, Howard finally finishes all of his overdue reconciliations. He returns to the film set just in time to kiss the girl and ride off into the sunset, but the incredible similarity of his young leading lady to Ms. Polley leaves as a final impression less a feeling of closure than the icky aftertaste of incest.
