No. 60 Jesus’ Son (2022) 4 of 100

 

Some more early Shannon now, in what must be his first decent screen role – I’ve yet to dig up ‘Chicago Cab’ at the time of writing. He did get a couple of words in ‘Groundhog Day’ and in ‘Chain Reaction’ but here he gets a couple of lines and a character name – even an on-screen caption!

The film has an ensemble of familiar faces from Billy Crudup off ‘Almost Famous’ in the lead to Holly Hunter, Jack Black and Shannon’s future on screen wife in ‘Can’t Come Out To Play’ Samantha Morton.

The list of notable names doesn’t however add up to a great film and, although there are some good bits, the whole thing seems a bit insubstantial.

Crudup plays the memorably named ‘Fuckhead’ who also provides the film’s narration. It opens with a car crash and then the familiar, ‘Wait I’m getting ahead of myself’ before we go into flashback for an hour or so before we make it back to the start. I never like this format and always think we’re getting a lot of padding before the interesting stuff actually happens.

The film has a lot of chapters with title cards coming on to announce them. They use a shaky font so you know it’s an indie project from the off. When we meet Fuckhead he’s a big old stoner mooching about for drugs. He hooks up with junkie Morton and later gets her pregnant and arranges her abortion. She later dies of an overdose when he fails to get up in time to revive her, so it’s not a fun character arc for her.

Another of the characters Fuckhead encounters is Dundun, played by Shannon, who's a sort of hippy with a beard and a leather waistcoat. He too likes his drugs and when Fuckhead meets him Shannon is wondering what to do with the man on the sofa who has a gunshot wound in his belly. The action happened off camera and although Shannon was the shooter he says it was an accident. Fuckhead and Shannon bundle the injured man into a VW Beetle but he dies on the way to hospital. They agree to ditch the body but Dundun gives Fuckhead a good kicking anyway lest he talks to the cops.

That’s the last we see of ‘Mike Shannon', as the credits have him, but he put in a good shift and gave us one of the film’s more memorable characters.

Fuckhead drifts along for the rest of the film and there are some decent sequences when he’s working as an orderly at a hospital with Jack Black. A full film of them would have been great! We then get to the car crash where Fuckhead rescues a baby and decides to get sober. He hooks up with Holly Hunter during his adventures and looks in on an Amish family. There are a couple of miracles along the way and it’s not clear if these are real or a drug induced fantasy. I’m going with the latter.

Overall this was a decent offering that was less than the sum of its parts.

When is Shannon-On? - 17.16

Outcome? Heading Off screen in a Beetle 

Film 3/5

Shannon Stars 2.5/5