Double Feature

June 2005 - Up until now, Joan Allen's most notable role was probably as a female vice presidential nominee in 2000's The Contender. Her latest role is very different but should make her a contender for leading roles for a long time to come.

Allen stars with Kevin Costner in The Upside of Anger, a 2005 film written by Mike Binder. Binder also has a role along with talented teen actress Evan Rachel Wood.

The movie opens at a funeral scene, but we don't find out who's dead until the end. The scene is brief and then we switch to "three years earlier."

At this point, Terry Wolfmeyer (Allen) is drunk and upset because her husband has disappeared. She tells her four daughters that their father has taken his wallet and run off with his Swedish secretary. Terry quickly becomes drinking buddies with neighbor Denny Davies (Costner), an ex-baseball player who makes his living by doing a radio show and capitalizing on his name.

Terry and Denny booze their way into a romance. But, Terry's still angry at just about everything and everyone. Most notably, she's still mad at her missing husband. She's looked up the number of his former secretary in Sweden but is too angry at him to make the call.

Overall review: Liked it. The movie has some problems, I think, but they're overcome by strong performances from Allen and Costner, who manage to make their tipsy characters very likeable. The film also has several genuinely funny moments, and it keeps you guessing until the end about who actually died.

The Upside of Anger is rated R, mostly for language. If it's not still in theaters, look for it on DVD sometime this fall.

You can also catch Joan Allen in a supporting role in The Bourne Supremacy, the 2004 sequel to The Bourne Identity. In this thriller, Allen plays a mid-level CIA manager charged with tracking down amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon). The CIA suspects Bourne is responsible for the deaths of a couple of agents in Germany. But, Bourne didn't do it. He's been framed. His mission here is to avoid capture by the CIA while tracking down the real assassin.

Overall review: This one falls somewhere between "Liked it" and "Ehhh, it was OK." There's plenty of action, but sometimes the editing is so frenetic that the action is hard to follow. I don't remember the first movie being this way. If there's a sequel to the sequel, I hope it's a throwback to the original.

The Bourne Supremacy is rated PG-13. It's currently out on DVD.