neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Frailty
	Bill Paxton Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe 2002		It's difficult to decide what's more surprising about the terror-fraught psychodrama "Frailty" — the cagey, unexpected way it ends or the impressive job done on both sides of the camera by actor Bill Paxton ("A Simple Plan," "Titanic"), directing his first feature film. But everything about "Frailty" is just right. Matthew McConaughey gives the sort of riveting, nuanced performance that he couldn't deliver in his previous project, the second-rate romantic comedy "The Wedding Planner." Here, he plays a man who shows up out of the blue at an FBI office in Texas, claims to know the identity and whereabouts of a calculating, elusive serial killer, and begins to recount a dire family history to a skeptical agent (Powers Boothe). The movie switches to flashbacks, with Paxton as a loving single father who begins to hear the voices of "angels" urging him to kill "demons" living in human form. The man recruits his two young sons to aid him in his mission; the older boy resists; and "Frailty" unveils its jolting revelations.