TRAVELLER

TRAVELLER is a pet project of Bill Paxton, who produces and stars in a small picture about a clan of mobile Irish-American scam artist in the American South. Easy moving and character driven, it has a style reminiscent of the recently acclaimed SLING BLADE. Directed by Jack Green, the Oscar-winning cinematographer of many Clint Eastwood movies, this movie represents a departure for Paxton from the special effects laden movies in which he has appeared recently such as TWISTER (where Green was the Director of Photography) and APOLLO 13.

The movie begins with a young man named Pat (Mark Wahlberg) returning to the clan to bury his deceased father. Pat’s father married outside the clan and was banished. Pat wants to be accepted back but is ostracized by the head of the clan, Boss Jack (Luke Askew). Pat insists he is prepared to stick with the clan and is sheltered by a fellow clansman, named Bokky, (Bill Paxton). Bokky teaches Pat the ropes such as selling black paint for driveway sealant and more.

Out on the road, Bokky and Pat pull a scam on a bartender named Jean (Julianna Margulies). Jean loses her job. Bokky feels such remorse, that he returns the money to Jean and develops a romantic relationship with her. Meanwhile, the two partners also run into an aging scammer named Double D and partner with him on a few small scams. When Jean’s daughter has to have an expensive operation, Bokky, Pat and Double D come up with a complicated counterfeit money scam on a local horse gambler named Bimbo. With multiple lies and acts to juggle, violence ultimately ensues.

This movie isn’t so much a piece of entertainment, but an acting exercise by Paxton. Even so, he still plays the stereotypical everyman, except that in this movie he has an extremely foul mouth. Mark Wahlberg stands the most to gain in this movie, with a decent performance. In real life, he is trying to break away from his bubble-head rapper image as Marky Mark. Julianna Margulies does little in the movie except prance around in skimpy clothing. Like other TV stars, the leap to the big screen for Ms. Margulies seems to represent merely an opportunity to reduce her character and become a sex symbol. The best performance in this movie is from the unknown Vincent Chase as Bimbo, a shameless villain with no moral sensibilities whatsoever.

The only entertainment value this movie has is revealing how the scams work. This presents a dilemma for the moral viewer because he is asked to cheer for a team of lovable crooks. Furthermore, the audience is asked to cheer the brutal murders of an opposing gang. What starts as an intriguing character study in the life and times of a wayward group turns into another pistol shooting, bang-up climax which is so representative of Hollywood movies today. Mr. Paxton may continue to act in smaller low-budget pictures, and this may have been a big step for him and his audience, but it ultimately represents a cheap imitation of better action pictures containing fleshed out characters like GET SHORTY and THE USUAL SUSPECTS.