CMT Blog: Archive

I was a little on the fence about catching a Saturday (April 17) screening of the new movie Provinces of Night at the Nashville Film Festival. But with a cast that includes Kris Kristofferson, Dwight Yoakam, Val Kilmer and Hilary Duff and music directed by T Bone Burnett, I figured it was worth a shot. Man, am I glad I went. The story centers around the Bloodworth family in the backwoods of Middle Tennessee and the maelstrom that gets unleashed when Kristofferson, the absent patriarch, returns after 40 years on the run. He's a hitchhiking country singer with one album to his credit but not much else for all his wandering. A few different themes are explored after his return, including the youngest member of the family's coming of age, the deadly secret that kept the old man away and the self-destructive nature of his sons, played by Yoakam, Kilmer and W. Earl Brown.

Those sons were the sticking point for me, although the story revolves around the sheepish teenager (Reece Thompson) and his struggles amidst the craziness of his kin. Yoakam is particularly foreboding and exudes a psychotic evil from his first moment onscreen, while Kilmer's character lives his life much less seriously. He prefers to get by on a steady stream of women and alcohol and provides some much needed comic relief, but his character is charming enough that it's hard not to root for the guy even when you hate him. Then there's Brown's character -- the only one who stayed home with mama -- who thinks he can tell the future and is as bitter as they come. His determination to punish his absent father is almost as frightening as Yoakam's outright violence. Needless to say, this is not a kid's movie. Throw in a twisted love story and the wisdom of an old country troubadour, and you've got a movie that leaves a lasting impression about the interplay of a dysfunctional family. If there is one criticism I can make, it's that the plot lopes along rather slowly, but with such interesting characters and the movie headed back in for more edits, that's an issue worth exploring for yourself.