[yasr_overall_rating]
A barber comes into contact with two men fixated on what triggers evil. A father, whose life is destroyed in pursuit of a killer, and a son who is trying to prevent his father’s obsession.
Scott Glenn is one of my favorite actors. He was perfectly cast in “Silence of the Lambs” but also “The Hunt for Red October” and played a good bad guy in “Backdraft.” Of course he’s made many movies over the years but they’re the ones I remember him most for. With “The Barber,” he gives another memorable performance as Eugene Van Wingerdt, a barber who is convicted of being a serial killer by a relentless and tenacious cop but with no hard evidence whatsoever, he is released and gets on with his life. With no legal way of taking him down, the detective ends up committing suicide and his young son, John (Chris Coy), grows up, determined to become a cop himself so he can hunt down and prove that Van Wingerdt is the killer his father was convinced he was.
Years later, John makes his way to a small Northern Californian town where he tracks down Eugene and pretends that he is a budding serial killer. Of course, Eugene is no fool and is not going to divulge the information John needs in order to convict him so he very methodically and exhaustingly puts him through his paces and informs him that he must find a woman, get her to like him and then kill her. John does what he says, much to Eugene’s surprise and slowly, he takes him under his wing. When Luis (Max Arciniega), Eugene’s understudy at his barber shop suspects that John is not who he says he is, things begin to spiral out of control and it is then that Eugene’s true colors begin to show.
Director Basel Owies shoots his movie very old-school, utilizing steady camera angles and smooth tracking shots instead of the hackneyed hand-held camera techniques that pass as conventional these days. He also adds plenty of suspense and apprehension to a movie that in the hands of a much less capable director, could have been greatly exaggerated into another instantly forgettable melodrama. Chris Coy and Scott Glenn have genuine onscreen chemistry and Glenn does such a tremendous transformation, initially painting his character as a sad, lonely old man who misses family and love only to recalibrate himself into the cruel, cold-blooded monster that John, and his father, always knew he was. Highly recommended.
Available on DVD and Blu-ray April 28th
