The Education of Charlie Banks: Review By B. Alan Orange

Jesse Eisenberg stars in two films this week. Adventureland is Greg Mottola’s follow-up to Superbad. It comes as the more high profile picture, stemming from a prestigious family tree. Fred Durst’s debut The Education of Charlie Banks could almost be its prequel. And it’s the more entertaining of the two. Jesse plays essentially the same character in both projects. This is his college adventure before that summer spent at some horrifying New Jersey amusement park. Adventureland’s James Brennan is not at all unlike Charlie Banks. They are both extraordinarily ordinary. They serve as our tour guide through these two blinding, East Coast college worlds. We’re allowed to see the entire spectrum of post-graduate life through Eisenberg’s innocent eyes. We welcome him as our avatar. He isn’t threatening. He isn’t the best looking guy on screen. He is the embodiment of Joe Student. A B+ achiever that dabbles in booze and the occasional self-rolled blunt. He’s a little too easy to identify with. Basically, he’s a good kid. That singular archetype works better here than it does in Adventureland. We need to understand Jason Ritter’s bully to fully buy into the tale being told in The Education of Charlie Banks. Without the solid whitewashed fence post that is Eisensenburg, Durst’s film could have turned into the second coming of Swimfan.

It’s some bizarre kismet that allowed both Durst’s film and Mottola’s to open on the same day. They actually support and help each other in odd ways. If you see them playing on a double bill, I suggest you buy a ticket. Adventureland is a golden delicious coming of age romance. It’s a well-made slug of whiskey that chokes and tears more than it provides laughter. Charlie Banks, on the other hand, is a well-crafted thriller that you’ll never see coming. It sets itself up as standard issue fare, but then ducks and weaves at every single turn on its self-imposed map. It is the most unpredictable film of the year thus far. It, too, is a relationship drama at heart. The narrative focuses on two boys from opposite sides of the track. Their past history together sets up an intense element of anxiety and stress that runs throughout the entire duration of their time spent on screen together. You know something big is coming. An explosion. Hiroshima. It’s going to be dark and ugly. The more time you invest in both young men, the more you truly hate to see this inevitable moment come. There is a ticking nervousness intertwined throughout each and every scene. And it proves to be more effective than the past four slasher films of the season.

Throughout the story, there are many references to French Deconstructuralism. If you are at all familiar with Tony Bill’s 1980 film My Body Guard, you will see where Durst is headed with this. It becomes especially obvious in the climax, when Jason Ritter strips down to his wife beater and starts punching himself in the head. Durst’s idea is to take Matt Dillon’s Moody character from that film and deconstruct him as a true living human being. He tears down the bully archetype and rebuilds it from the ground up. Ritter’s Mick isn’t a one-dimensional bad guy. He is set up as the neighborhood bully. And then each layer is peeled away like an onion. From the get go, Durst makes sure we know how evil this kid is. Before we get ten minutes in, Mick is delivering one heck of a brutal ass kicking to two local thugs. Both are left in critical condition. Ritter, in both his past films and in real life, is instantly likeable. At first, he seems an odd choice for such a tough guy. But it’s that personable aura that allows him to truly get away with his actions. We never dislike Mick. But he immediately puts the audience on edge. He looks approachable, until his eyes sink into the back of his head, and that bloody fist comes out. It’s a tight rope that Ritter walks. He does it with a perfected precision.

Mick and Charlie first lay eyes on each other in elementary school. Though, they aren’t properly introduced until their senior year of high school. Mick seems like your typical New York city street thug, dragging a Travolta swagger through a chick heavy party on the Upper East Side. He takes an immediate liking to Charlie, and the two potential friends seem destined for each other. After a “meet-cute” in a bathroom shower that finds them spraying graffiti on the tiles, Charlie is instructed to stand by Mick’s side during a drunken scuffle. The kid comes at his antagonizers like a vicious animal, and each solid kick is felt deep in the bones. He’s been asked to this macho showoff, and leaves with his skin intact. The same can’t be said for his two opponents, both of which are rushed to the hospital. On life support, they might not make it to see tomorrow’s pop quiz on psychotic profiling. The set up is natural, and real. Never hokey. The fight could have been played to grandiose measure, but Durst has decided to make this scuffle as real as possible. It’s not visceral in a Fight Club sense. It’s stomach turning.

The first act sees Charlie Banks and his father sneaking into the local police bureau to tattle on Mick. An action that strictly goes against the code of the streets. Banks is a decent fellow; a real Mr. Charlie-Do-Right. We sort of hate him for blabbing to the cops, but as he explains it, justice needed to be served. He later reneges on this notion, pulling his sole testimony from the record books. Mick is set free, and Charlie sort of forgets about him. Until that one fateful day at college. Mick turns up in Charlie’s dorm room, and we suspect that he has come to pay his proper respects. Every interaction between the two men is rott with tension. It’s a suspense play that never pays off the way a technically proficient narrative should. It doesn’t drag the audience over the usual speed bumps and beats. It jumps at indifference, coloring way outside the lines of most thrillers. It’s too smart for that. Durst knows you expect a punch in the face, followed by a kick in the groin. Like a fluffer girl, he brings the boil up, then pulls back at the last second, avoiding any cliched moment that might present itself.

Mick is a reactionary guy. He is quick to anger, yet he finds something honest in Charlie. A certain quality that he is missing within himself. We expect him to go completely off the rails, but he never quite gets to that point. Instead, he fully immerses himself in this unobtainable college world. Fascinated by the rich culture of it, he decides to see if he can stay afloat in this academia landscape. He is a regular Tom Ripley, attempting to live as Dickie Greenleaf. Through much trepidation, guilt, and fear, Charlie eventually comes to accept Mick and proves to be a mentor of sorts. Their confrontation comes at an unexpected moment, which changes everything completely. We almost believe in our commitment to both characters. Mick is no longer the bully. He’s an empathetic creature, and Jason Ritter is able to turn our viewpoint backwards. It’s a bit of good old fashion manipulation that drags us screaming into the mind of Charlie Banks. The payoff is swift and ugly. And earns its place on screen. The antagonist flirts with wearing the skin of the protagonist. Like I said, above all else, The Education of Charlie Banks is a keen and observant deconstruction of the bully archetype.

A very smart film from Fred Durst; the director will certainly surprise his most ardent critics. His music is commercial. It made money. He knows how to manipulate and charge an audience. He takes that energy and fully explores its depths here. Something he wasn’t allowed to do in his follow-up film The Longshots (which premiered before Charlie Banks sometime last year). Jason Ritter? Whoop-doo! Fred Durst the director? Whoop-doo! Jesse Eisenberg? Whoop-doo! The film is pretty darn good. I suggest you check it out.

(All of B. Alan Orange’s reviews are based on the Boo! or Whoop-doo! evaluation system.)