Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Anthony Hopkins | ... | Coleman Silk | |
Nicole Kidman | ... | Faunia Farley | |
Ed Harris | ... | Lester Farley | |
Gary Sinise | ... | Nathan Zuckerman | |
Wentworth Miller | ... | Young Coleman Silk | |
Jacinda Barrett | ... | Steena Paulsson | |
Harry Lennix | ... | Mr. Silk | |
Clark Gregg | ... | Nelson Primus | |
Anna Deavere Smith | ... | Mrs. Silk | |
Lizan Mitchell | ... | Ernestine | |
Kerry Washington | ... | Ellie | |
Phyllis Newman | ... | Iris Silk | |
Margo Martindale | ... | Psychologist | |
Ron Canada | ... | Herb Keble | |
Mili Avital | ... | Young Iris |
This is the story of Coleman Silk (Sir Anthony Hopkins), a classics professor with a terrible secret that is about to shatter his life in a small New England town. When his affair with young troubled janitor Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman) is uncovered, the secret Silk had harbored for over fifty years from his wife, his children, and colleague, writer Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), fast explodes in a conflagration of devastating consequences. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all of his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life became unravelled. Written by lakeshoreentertainment.com
Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, and Fred Harris are three of my favorite actors, so I believed that this film couldn't miss. I was wrong. Despite the heroic efforts of the cast, the film ultimately fails to convince.
First of all, despite his outstanding talents, Hopkins is miscast. He convinces me that he is African American about as much as he convinces me he is Jewish-not very much. The fact that he is playing an African American pretending not to be African American doesn't help. I just couldn't get around his character and see him as anything but-Anthony Hopkins.
The idea that a person like Nicole Kidman would throw herself at a stranger more than twice her age also stretches credibility. I could see nothing in either of their characters that could convince me that that they would give each other a second thought. It is not just that Kidman is extremely beautiful and that Hopkins is old, but they play people of such completely different classes that it would take more than a chance encounter for them to develop a relationship. The movie simply doesn't create the moments needed for them to be plausible.
Fred Harris is the most convincing of the three, but he exists as little more than an ominous presence. He could have been done away with completely and the movie could still have had the same outcome.
If you want to see great actors, they are here. Their performances are worth seeing for that reason alone if you are a fan. However, when it all boils down, even they can't make this movie work.