Direction And Performances Keep 'The Barber' A Cut Above Cliché

By Joel Wicklund in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 27, 2015 8:00PM

Scott Glenn in "The Barber" (photo courtesy of ARC Entertainment).

As you watch The Barber, you realize you've seen a lot of this stuff before: a serial killer leading a double life as an ordinary Joe, a cop tormented by the evil mastermind who got away, and the psychopathic murderer mentoring a budding young acolyte. The Barber assimilates these and other elements from countless films about serial killers, yet the movie still works, surviving formulaic plot turns through some excellent performances and solid filmmaking.

Those formulaic turns pile up a little too much in the climax, but this low-budget independent film is still a modest, well-crafted thriller that betters a lot of similarly derivative serial killer tales that have come up short trying to copy The Silence of the Lambs or Seven.

Scott Glenn, who pursued serial killers as Agent Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, is the pursued here—though whether he is truly a serial killer is one of the movie's central twists. Glenn plays Eugene Van Wingerdt, an elderly and unfailingly polite barber working in a small midwestern town. But John McCormack (Chris Coy) believes he is actually Francis Alan Visser, killer of 17 young women in the Chicago area 20 years earlier. McCormack's father was a troubled cop who committed suicide when Visser was cleared of the charges, and now the son is either tracking Visser down to bring him to justice...or perhaps to learn his trade.

Dramatically, the movie really stands on Glenn's shoulders. The screen veteran has been delivering emotionally authentic, unflashy performances for the better part of 40 years, in movies as notable as The Right Stuff, Urban Cowboy and Personal Best. Where many actors would have played Van Wingerdt/Visser with showy, winking panache, Glenn manages to play both sides of the character with an oblique sort of empathy.

Coy does a nice job of playing the worn-out, possibly dangerous younger man who tries to persuade the suspected killer to show him the ropes. However, the real gem of the supporting cast is Max Arciniega (loyal Breaking Bad viewers may remember him as the ill-fated Krazy 8) as Glenn's barbershop employee. Arciniega makes his hothead character oddly likable, and his performance is charged with tension in his confrontations with Coy and Glenn.

The Barber is the first film from Chapman Filmed Entertainment, a new production company with an unusual structure—producing professional, low-budget commercial features using the production facilities at the film school at Chapman University in California. Director Basel Owies and cinematographer Allen Liu are both graduates of the college, and their first feature film in those capacities shows assured, classical filmmaking style. Moody lighting and effective but conservative camera movement give the film an appropriately brooding feel. There are some stumbles in trying to convey middle America in a movie obviously filmed mainly in California, but much bigger productions have fallen victim to that trap too.

The more serious problem with The Barber is the script by Max Enscoe, which falls back on clichéd dialogue like, "He went so deep into the darkness that he never came back," or some simply foolish plot revelations, such as Coy’s character keeping a stockpile of serial killer clippings pinned to the bottom of a table where anyone would find them. But the character-driven aspects of the script help balance the weaker, plot-driven moments, as Enscoe does provide some fairly compelling, one-on-one dialogue exchanges.

While by no means essential viewing, anyone coming down too hard on The Barber may have been lucky enough to miss some of Hollywood's far more absurd or offensive offerings of serial killer conventions. Watch Taking Lives, Copycat or Twisted, to name just a few, and you'll see this formula rung out without a drip of inspiration. By comparison, The Barber has just enough flavor to enjoy this helping of leftovers.

The Barber. Directed by Basel Owies. Written by Max Enscoe. Starring Scott Glenn, Chris Coy and Max Arciniega. 90 mins. Rated R.