The Riot Act

Set during the turn of the century, The Riot Act details the turmoil that ensues after Brett Cullen’s Willard Pearrow shoots and kills his daughter’s illicit lover. Filmmaker Devon Parks has infused The Riot Act with an egregiously, excessively deliberate pace that holds the viewer at arms length from start to finish, with the hands-off atmosphere compounded by a sluggish narrative and an almost total absence of compelling characters. (Cullen and his costars deliver decent work, admittedly, but they’ve all been forced into the confines of one-dimensional and entirely uninteresting figures.) And although Parks attempts to liven things up with a whole host of subplots and developments, including Willard’s ongoing encounters with a masked villain bent on revenge, The Riot Act‘s lifeless atmosphere makes it virtually impossible to embrace anything that transpires within its bloated and frequently interminable running time – which is a shame, certainly, given that the picture does possess a small handful of attributes. (Those period costumes and sets look pretty great, for example.)

* out of ****