Despite its moving flashbacks, Huston’s tale of a bookshop owner bereaved by the Lockerbie bombing fails to sustain an emotional edge
The fiendish eyebrows that make Danny Huston so castable as a
Hollywood character
Actor play second fiddle to his jawline – a slight droop around the jowls that lends a heaviness to his deeply felt performance as a man broken by grief. This London-set drama is Huston’s first time behind the camera in more than 20 years. Before he was an actor he was a director – just like his dad John – and he has a knack with actors, although the film is flat in places and more than a little bland.
Huston is Tom Hammond, a bookshop owner and an irritable one – the sort of man who snaps rudely at a homeless person begging in a doorway. He’s first seen at home in
Chelsea stashing a wad of £50 notes into his battered leather briefcase. When he’s robbed, though, the money turns out to be a red herring. Tucked inside a battered paperback in the bag was the precious last photograph of his son Luke (Jonah Hauer-King), a university student. The photo was taken the night before Luke was killed on board the Pan Am flight to
New York that exploded over Lockerbie in 1988.