R E V I E W S
Gift, The (2000)
Starring: Cate
Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, Keanu Reeves, Hilary Swank, Greg
Kinnear, Katie Holmes Studio: Paramount Classics Review Posted: 1.25.01 Rating: 8/10
By Stephen.
"A gift to be fond of, or not?"
Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) is a fortune teller. She performs readings for people. She uses her cards to look into people's future and lives. When Valerie Barksdale (Hilary Swank) seeks help from her, Annie suggests Valerie leave her husband. Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves) is a wife beater, and Valerie does not know what to do. Donnie threatens Annie and her kids if she does not leave Valerie alone. He does not take kindly witches, as he refers to Annie and her gift for seeing things.
Buddy Cole (Giovanni Ribisi), a car mechanic with a troubled past, also seeks Annie's help. But she never really is able to help him. She also has to take care of her kids. And when her oldest son causes trouble in school, she has a talk with Wayne Collins (Greg Kinnear), the school's principal. When she leaves Collins and his fiancée Jessica King (Katie Holmes), she encounters her first of many frightening visions.
Just a couple of days after Annie saw King with Collins (Greg Kinnear) at a country club, she disappears. The police is unable to go any further with their investigation and so they are forced to turn to Annie. The first act established all the characters and their traits, which made for an intensive character study by screenwriters Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson. Basically, The Gift is a character-driven movie. And it works out pretty well.
Annie's visions increase in length and intensity as the movie goes on. Her gift to see things, in this case a dead person, reminds of the character in The Sixth Sense who could see dead people. But comparing the two is out of question and wrong. They are two different movies. The Gift uses many flashbacks and visions that are all paid off and make more sense in the end.
It also serves up many possibilities of who was responsible for Jessica King's disappearance (swipe to read: in fact, who is responsible for her death). There are a few suspects and each of them has at least one motif. I figured out who it was. It doesn't take long to figure, but the movie tries hard and succeeds on a fine line to make you think.
The Gift is also fully equipped with scares and frightening images. All served up by Annie's visions about Jessica King. Also, every subplot in this movie makes sense and is needed because it adds to integrity and the building-up of suspense. And there is a lot of suspense. Some of it foreseeable.
The performances are straight A and direction is well executed. Blanchett manages to convey Annie's problems well and is scared when we are (obviously). Reeves does okay and most probably won't ever be able top his performance in Point Break and Speed. Ribisi, Swank, and Kinnear were pretty solid. The most exceptional was Katie Holmes, who managed to grow out of her teen image in this movie, as she went nude in front of the camera (daring, yet a lovely-favor?-thing to do for her fans-kidding).
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