Wildcat, an artistic avenue to take for the sad old tire called the biopic, was written by Shelby Gaines and Ethan Hawke, and also directed by the latter. Based on the tortured life of Flannery O’Connor, the film stars Maya Hawke, Ethan’s daughter, Laura Linney, Cooper Hoffan, Steve Zahn and even a cameo by Liam Neeson.
Please go see this film as Hawke and company do such beautiful justice to the author’s forced convalescent life. Being recently injured is NOTHING compared to lupus in the 1930’s BUT it certainly gives me new appreciation for being stuck and reduced as Miss O’Connor found herself.
Maya Hawke does a tremendous job on being real. You can tell she is an actress above vanity and 100% for her art. The same praise goes ten fold for Laura Linney who finally got out of sitcom hell to do a tried and true dramatic film role as her beautiful days of yore (Savages, to name just one).
Philip Ettinger played Robert Lowell brilliantly and deserves more work (see First Reformed in which Ethan Hawke should have won the Oscar and Ettinger is jaw droppingly real). I didn’t recognize him in the moment, but heard after the fact that the traveling salesman was Cooper Hoffman, proof that he can morph into a different persona, literally hiding in plain site. Liam Neeson, whose role is minuscule in screen time, maximizes his talent which has also been hidden behind guns blazing in the lame Taken type films. Bless Ethan Hawke for giving this man a reason to act again.
And I know the ghost of Flannery O’Connor would join me in saying SCREW YOU to Rotten Tomatoes whose critics must have their tastes only on their negative devil sharp tongues. 54%, my sweet petunias.
