A Family Man

Directed by Mark Williams, A Family Man follows ambitious corporate headhunter Dane Jensen (Gerard Butler) as he’s forced to put his career on the back burner in the wake of a health crisis. It’s familiar subject matter that’s employed to watchable, albeit mostly forgettable, effect by Williams, as the filmmaker, working from Bill Dubuque’s screenplay, delivers a paint-by-numbers drama that boasts some of the hoariest cliches associated with stories of this ilk – which inevitably does ensure that few, if any, of A Family Man‘s plot developments come as much of a surprise. There’s nevertheless little doubt that the picture’s entertaining atmosphere ensures that the (admittedly overlong) running time is rarely as painful or tedious as one might’ve anticipated, with the decent-enough vibe heightened by Butler’s compelling, sympathetic performance and a third act riddled with unabashedly sentimental (and distinctly affecting) moments and interludes. (It doesn’t hurt, either, that Williams elicits strong work from an impressive supporting cast that includes Willem Dafoe, Gretchen Mol, and Alfred Molina, with the latter faring especially well as an unemployed engineer hoping for help from Butler’s character.) The final result is an often painfully conventional concoction that does, for the most part, fare reasonably well, although it seems unlikely that A Family Man is destined to join the pantheon of above-average similarly-themed endeavors.

**1/2 out of ****