"Salvation through Clairvoyance"
| None | Light | Moderate | Heavy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | ||||
| Violence | ||||
| Sex | ||||
| Nudity |
What You Need To Know:
The devices which attempt to rescue this movie out of a complete gutter are its editing and directing. Many conversations and moments in time overlap, but ultimately end up revealing the whole story. HEAVEN covers lots of unsavory subject matter and has lots of negative content. Heaven is viewed as a very sympathetic character. Robert’s character is more complex. He truly loves his son, but gambling and cheating are not the way to get out of debt. This is not a feel-good movie. It is not sufficiently textured. The symbolism and storytelling are deficient. HEAVEN boils down to trying to gain sympathy for gambling and cross-dressing.
Content:
(PaPa, OO, HoHo, B, LLL, VVV, SSS, NN, A, S, MM) Largely pagan worldview with a strong fortune telling element, cross-dressing character & other homosexual content, & mild moral element of caring for a child; 95 obscenities & 12 profanities; strong violence including shooting, rape, beating, punching, assault, car accident, & images of bloody corpses; stripping, cross-dressing, sexual dancing, & some sexual talk; upper female nudity; alcohol use; smoking; and, lying, gambling & hatred toward women.
More Detail:
Martin Donovan isn’t a well-known actor. Perhaps, his most widely known picture is the obscure movie PORTRAIT OF A LADY. Even so, he is a “go-to” guy for troubled leading men. He seethed in THE OPPOSITE OF SEX. Now in HEAVEN, he plays a compulsive gambler with a wife about to divorce him and leave with their son and their psychologist.
Donovan plays Robert, whose beautiful wife Jill (Joanna Going) is fed up with his gambling. She has left Robert and taken their son Sean. Robert copes with this by designing a strip club, called Paradise, for his creepy buddy Al. Al is particularly proud of one stripper named Heaven (Danny Edwards). Heaven is not only a transvestite but also a clairvoyant; he has visions and can see scenes of the future. Al, however, mistreats Heaven and is mean to him.
Robert assumes a massive gambling debt, which spoils his chances for getting partial custody of Sean. Jill has made a strong case for sole custody. When Robert rescues Heaven from some rapists, Heaven vows to help Robert. When Al secretly plans to burn down Paradise to collect insurance money, Robert temporarily kidnaps Sean, reveals the psychologist to be a lothario and regains some money through Heaven’s help.
The devices which attempt to rescue this movie out of a complete gutter are its editing and directing. Many conversations and moments in time overlap, but ultimately end up revealing the whole story. Since PULP FICTION, non-linear story telling has been used ad nausea, particularly in movies about thugs, drug users and other lowlifes. (See LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS.)
Nevertheless, HEAVEN covers lots of unsavory subject matter and has lots of negative content. Heaven is viewed as a very sympathetic character. While the source of his clairvoyant power is never revealed, the power is seen as an asset. This movie has a mean, ugly strip club owner, lots of soulless strippers, a homosexual bouncer, and many two-bit thugs.
Robert’s character is more complex. He truly loves his son, but gambling and cheating at gambling are not the way to get out of debt.
HEAVEN is not a feel-good movie. The writing is not sufficiently textured. The symbolism and storytelling technique are deficient. HEAVEN boils down to trying to gain sympathy for gambling and cross-dressing.
- Content: +4Share:
- Content: +2