The Strange One

Directed by Jack Garfein, The Strange One follows Ben Gazzara’s Jocko De Paris as he terrorizes his fellow cadets at a fictional Military College and is eventually forced to answer for his terrible behavior. There’s little doubt that The Strange One improves quite steadily as it progresses, as Garfein, working from Calder Willingham’s screenplay, kicks the proceedings off with an absolutely disastrous opening stretch that offers little in the way of attention-grabbing elements or ideas – with the movie’s less-than-compelling atmosphere exacerbated by an almost total lack of momentum and an initial emphasis on meaningless, uninteresting chatter. It’s clear, then, that the picture benefits from Gazzara’s consistently captivating performance and a midsection that’s been peppered with several engrossing sequences, with, in terms of the latter, Jocko’s extraordinarily smug confrontation with a superior officer essentially (and effectively) triggering a second half that does, for the most part, fare better than one might’ve anticipated. The comeuppance-focused third act ensures that The Strange One finishes on a memorable and decidedly satisfying note, although it is, in the end, not quite enough to compensate for the aggressively off-putting bent of the movie’s early goings.

** out of ****