Superficially at least, Down In The Valley shares DNA with recent neo-westerns Brokeback Mountain and The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada. (Well, a grizzled Bruce Dern chases trespassers off his land with a shotgun, so it’s got to be a western of sorts.) Where those films fraternise with trailer-park hoi polloi, Ed Norton’s delusional cowpoke heads west, to the San Fernando Valley, a vast suburban hinterland that might be Calcutta with dry walling. There, seduced by his ‘aw shucks’ manner, he gets pounced by Evan Rachel Wood’s tearaway Lolita. Her security guard step-dad (David Morse) is, needless to say, less than thrilled with his teenaged daughter’s latest paramour and by the time we see the household collection of Colt.45s, it’s clear that the ensuing domestic friction will not end well.
David Jacobson’s frequently fascinating follow-up to Dahmer purposely strains toward genre mythology. The trail ends in the vast identikit urban sprawl. The western hero is depicted as an illusion, or, with a nod to Bush The Younger (cited as an inspiration for the screenplay), a kind of mental illness. And so forth. Channelling The Searchers via Taxi Driver, Ms. Wood provides a great Betsy to Norton’s anti-hero.
Sadly, though Norton is as compelling as ever, the protagonist is no Travis Bickle. From the get-go, he’s needy, charmless and too contrived by half. Long before it occurs, you just know he’ll happen upon a Fordian film set or theme park for a High Noon denouement. And what’s this? He’s riding around on a horse?
Down In The Valley may be a less uncomfortably schematic lamentation than Don’t Come Knocking, but only just.