Mark Wahlberg isn’t up to the emotional legwork of the anti-bullying drama Joe Bell
It’s certainly a choice to cast Wahlberg as a man marching across the country for tolerance
Film Reviews Joe Bell
In Joe Bell, Mark Wahlberg plays a father on a pilgrimage—a cross-country walking tour meant to take him from Oregon to New York City entirely on foot, with stops along the way to speak out against bullying to whoever will listen. This is either very good or very bad casting. Given his history of hate crime, Wahlberg lands near the bottom (probably right below Mel Gibson) on the list of Hollywood stars who could believably preach, on screen or off, about the importance of accepting those different from you. On the other hand, there’s an element of atonement to the march for change embarked upon by the eponymous Joe Bell. He’s out there on the road at least partially to make up for his own intolerance. One must assume that no research or Method acting techniques were necessary for Wahlberg to get into character.
By Joe’s side on this long trek is his teenage son, Jadin (Reid Miller), who tags along to high school assemblies where his father clumsily (and quite briefly) speaks on the importance of accepting people for who they are. Jadin is gay, and it’s in his honor that Joe is marching, to raise awareness about the kind of relentless abuse the boy endured at his small-town school. Joe Bell cuts from scenes of the two bickering and bonding on the road to the events of several months earlier, when Jadin came out to his family and community. This flashback structure comes courtesy of screenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry, who also penned the Oscar-winning adaptation of Brokeback Mountain—a more elegant drama about the burden placed on gay men just trying to live in a country hostile to their very existence.
This time, Ossana and McMurtry have looked to headlines, not fiction, for source material. Those who know what the real Bell family went through will immediately recognize the narrative subterfuge of the early scenes, which withhold information that a simple Google search would uncover. Without “spoiling” this tragic true story, let’s just say that it’s a debatably tasteful choice made for dramatic and emotional expediency—a “twist” that the movie occasionally risks implausibility to protect. For example, would a school principal really offer no context to an assembly of students for why this particular father is here to speak to them about the dangers of bullying? Though Joe is supposedly crossing America to educate and have empathetic discussions, the film devises only a handful of encounters for him—partially because it’s spending so much of its running time concealing the nature of what he might actually discuss with the strangers he meets.
As the flashbacks reveal, Joe is more casual than raging homophobe: He doesn’t reject his son outright, but he does wrestle with embarrassment about what the neighbors might think. There’s some nuance to this characterization that may be true to the real Joe Bell or just to plenty of parents like him; after all, not every father who fails their kid during the difficult coming-out period is a disapproving tyrant. Narratively, it feels at once convenient and inconvenient. While the movie escapes the tall task of engendering sympathy for a slur-spouting bigot, it’s also forced to tell a redemption story less clear-cut than someone having a full, transformative change of heart. Joe’s journey is about realizing that he could have been more supportive—a gradual epiphany that director Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters And Men) fails to effectively dramatize through montages set to sad country songs, unsteady handheld close-ups of Wahlberg’s grimacing face, and a load-bearing heart-to-heart with the local sheriff (Gary Sinise) Joe meets in Colorado, right before the film must get around to depicting the other tragedy that befell the Bells.
“It means well” is the faint praise one uses to damn a movie like this. Maybe it could have worked with a different star. Wahlberg, again, isn’t exactly unconvincing as a narrow-minded man trying to compensate for the prejudiced mistakes of his past. He looks most comfortable during early stretches of the movie, when it’s behaving like a buddy comedy between father and son; the actor’s comedic chops take a little of the cornball cringe out of a scene of the gruff Joe surprising Jadin by joining him on the chorus of “Born This Way.” But Wahlberg, delivering a performance that feels like community service, just isn’t up to driving a drama whose conflict is almost entirely internal; his default setting of sneering irritation is the wrong tool for the job. It leaves you wondering if this should have more fully been Jadin’s story, especially given the sensitivity of Miller’s turn. “I made it about me,” Joe Bell eventually climactically confesses of his son’s struggle. Joe Bell does the same, and if its heart is in the right place, its dramatic priorities are not.
66 Comments
Dude, his crime was in his teens. It’s horrible but why did it become trendy to hate this guy like 3 years ago? Is there no coming back for him?
Maybe because he tried to get his record expunged so he could open a freaking bar. You do realize that he took out an eye of one of his victims ? I’m all forgiveness but I’m not about completely forgetting that type of violence
The blinding is an apparent misreporting. The victim was tracked down a few years back and claims he was already blind (yes I know it’s the Daily Fail):https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2868589/Mark-Wahlberg-s-blinding-race-attack-victim-Johnny-Trinh-backs-bid-pardon-saying-course-forgive-didn-t-blind-Communist-Vietnamese-did-that.html
I’m all forgiveness but I’m not about completely forgetting that type of violence
I think you frame it in a completely fair way, and I think this affords much more balanced empathy than Dowd’s “Wahlberg lands near the bottom (probably right below Mel Gibson) on the
list of Hollywood stars who could believably preach, on screen or off,
about the importance of accepting those different from you.” This is a review, after all, and if this is Dowd’s profession and he wants to remark about such a heavy topic, you’d think he could do an ounce of research and better elaborate on what Wahlberg’s performance may shine on the Wahlberg now vs the Marky Mark then- overall Dowd’s attempt at this more looks like he wanted to put something sensational up front to hide the dead weight that follows.
That victim literally said he lost his eye when a grenade in exploded while serving for the South Vietnamese army in 1975. I’m not trying to defend Mark Wahlberg, I don’t particularly care for any of his work, but do your research.
That victim literally said he lost his eye when a grenade in exploded while serving for the South Vietnamese army in 1975. I’m not trying to defend Mark Wahlberg, I don’t particularly care for any of his work, but do your research.
That victim literally said he lost his eye when a grenade in exploded
while serving for the South Vietnamese army in 1975. I’m not trying to
defend Mark Wahlberg, I don’t particularly care for any of his work, but
do your research.
Not only is there no coming back from it, any attempt on his part to atone, however well-meant, will be deemed insufficient, pandering and hypocritical. This is the way.
You argument might be more compelling if his past actually made an impact on his career. He got a slap on the wrist for serious crimes because he is white. Any PoC in the same situation would’ve had their life ruined.
Wahlberg was forgiven by a biased justice system that is unforgiving to minorities. To claim that he needs even more latitude due to the passage of time is tone deaf.
Dude, I really don’t care about Wahlberg. He’s a terrible actor, and/but your post makes no sense.Someone gets off easy because of a biased system, therefore anything he says or does to make up for it is to be treated with derision and mockery…because “the system”?Also, to not treat him with derision and mockery is… “latitude”?You got some kinda mess in your head.
Anti-white racism is a thing and many people on this site have it.
How about serving time for his hate crime which he never did because he’s rich and famous?
Dowd’s framing of Wahlberg is definitely devoid of any well-thought-out perspective of a rehabilitation of a hateful person, so I guess Dowd is the type that very much would answer you no: a person who committed a hate crime is two-dimensional and cannot develop empathy, regardless of time.
“any well-thought-out perspective of a rehabilitation of a hateful person”For Dowd to comment on something, it has to actually happen first.
I doubt that you say that with any worthwhile information to back it up (though I’d have the same feeling if you had the opposite sentiment too).
Are you asking me to prove a negative? As far as I remember, Wahlberg mumbled some words of apology at some point. YMMV, but to me that falls short of being “well thought out”.
Additonally, Wahlberg’s general behviour in the years since don’t exactly strike me as the actions of someone who’s had any kind of profound change in their life apart from stardom and wealth, so I’m not exactly buying the idea that he’s rehabilitated in any way.
Are you asking me to prove a negative?
Not quite, I don’t think you need to do anything; what I do think is the article frames Wahlberg by a hate crime committed decades ago and very tenuously connects it to the actual review. I think even the most impartial person on this matter would say there’s little logic or effort on Dowd’s comment, and does a disservice to the topic of intolerance, bigotry, and hate crimes to flippantly bring a topic up like he has, for the sake of sensationalism and visitor traffic; it’s baffling that it’s a very strong topic that he could elaborate on further, but he stopped at “MAN COMMIT HATE CRIME IN YOUTH, MAN IS BAD EXAMPLE TO SAY GOOD WORDS ABOUT ACCEPTANCE!”. It is distinctly distasteful, and I think he could have focused on a larger point than just being catty about a hate crime.
“tenuously”I guess. Though you could make the argument that this level of review is letting you know how ethically-sourced your movie product is.
I think it’s worth it to call out that factor, it’s the first place my mind went to when I saw the subject matter & Wahlberg starring. I think the expectation that a professional in an industry can provide a perspective deeper than an initial thought’s worth is not too much of an ask though.
Yeah, that’s both too metaphysical for me and, I suspect, this free website which is on its last legs.
He did something utterly horrible and it really doesn’t seem to have impacted him. He certainly hasn’t grown from the experience. So, no. It doesn’t matter if he was in his teens. But you seem to be struggling with the fact that you like him. If you want to stan for him, go ahead. It doesn’t make you like him.
3 years ago? What rock have you been hiding under?
Right? I mean he unleashed Entourage on us over 17 years ago…
(OK, fine the first couple seasons were actually pretty good. But that doesn’t excuse the MOVIE in 2015).
Which incident, specifically, are you referring to? There are several to choose from.
Between the racist assault and the “If I’d been on that 9/11 flight there’s no way the plane would have went down” comments it paints a picture of a guy who at his core lacks human empathy and also is a fucking idiot.
When he beat up his girlfriend?
Its been trendy to hate him since he declared that 9/11 wouldn’t have happened had he been on the planesHe’s an awful asshole, always has been, always will be
Crimes. Plural. And have you read what he did? My god.
Hey, hey, hey now.At least when he was 18 he didn’t attend a pageant that was founded by a racist.
“Below Mel Gibson”
-The AV Club
I had heard they recut this movie after the poor reaction to the premiere last year; I was hoping they would get rid of the whole twist aspect of it, which seems in poor taste.
Just a guess, but is his son dead?
Yup.
I LOVE MY DEAD GAY SON
This should have got more ups. There you go, have a fourth one, from a man in the far future.
SPOILER for real life, but if you wanna knowThe son is indeed dead, and then the dad was killed by a truck halfway through his walking across America thing. Just tragedy on tragedy.
The trailer fully shows you what’s it is too, so it’s especially pointless. The trailer makes it look like it’s something that happens in the first 10 minutes, not a twist the film has to try and hide.
So him trekking with his dead son is a sort of a Sixth Sense move? Seems tasteless either way.
“would a school principal really offer no context to an assembly of
students for why this particular father is here to speak to them about
the dangers of bullying?”Sure, why not? We had a principal ban hoodies for a year because we could ‘carry guns in the hoods’, compared to that this would be small fry.
Oh lord, yes! The principal at my old high school would call an assembly for any damned thing. I found out from some teachers i ran into after graduation that he would sometimes decide do call an assembly minutes before classes started for the day and just expected all the first period teachers to deal with it. Mutherfucker loved to hear himself talk. Also, he was later demoted to a lesser administrative position (but not fired) when it came out he didn’t have a real masters degree. He literally had a fake diploma in his office.
You didn’t go to school in eastern PA did you? Because that never happened in my school but hot damn does it sound like something that would have!I graduated in the late ‘90s. My department just hired a girl who graduated in ‘15 and from what she said things sound pretty much the same.
I went to school in coastal Virginia in the late 90s. That school had so many problems, and despite how bad I knew it was at the time I learned some new messed up detail every time I visited home from college. I suspect it hasn’t changed much.
yes my principal did that for a motivational speaker, several actually. We knew nothing just that we didn’t have to go to class.
I don’t want to say that there’s no way Mark Wahlberg can be forgiven, but the issue raises a lot of important questions. What does forgiveness look like? How is it earned? What form could redemption take for something so plainly cruel as committing a hate crime? Whose forgiveness ultimately matters? He could’ve made a good movie about that if he was serious about this.
Typically, an apology that shows an understanding of exactly what you did wrong, that is not timed to suit your efforts to expand your business, is a start. It is then coupled with dedication to change and reparation and not simply saying “I moved on”.
Damn, its depressing that this is likely the last thing Larry McMurtry ever wrote.
What’s next? Getting Russell Crowe to star in Mrs. Doubtfire 2? Marky Mark ain’t about all those feelings and shit.
I think it’s apropos for Wahlberg to star in a film all about a guy feeling guilty about making something all about himself, and finding redemption by still making it all about himself.
Funny you should mention Crowe. Early in his career he played a gay character in another movie about a father/son relationship – The Sum of Us. The twist was that his dad, played by Jack Thompson, was completely supportive. I remember it being pretty good, but that was over 25 years ago.
“I BEDDA GET AN OSCAH FAH THIS SHIT!”
Can you believe he’s an Oscar nominee for acting? This jagoff?
You eat apples, right? That’s great! I produce Entourage!
This sounds fine, but I think we would all rather see Wahlberg do a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood thing based on his theories of how he would have stopped 9/11.
Look at all the perfect crowd, totally devoid of any past aggressions.
“A bullying film? You betcha, I’d love to star in … oh, it’s *anti* bullying? What the heck, I’ll do it anyway.”
God, I remember when the actual deaths happened, I cried all afternoon.
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Is this on Lifetime or Hallmark?
Fuck Marky Mark.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Wahlberg was a minor when the referred-to attacks happened. Not saying that absolves anything, but children do need to be given a little grace. They do things that suck simply because they don’t yet think the way adults are supposed to. Too many people want to apply adult sensibilities to children, and it’s very common for that conceit to be weaponized against children who grow up in tougher environments (not sure what Wahlberg’s home life was, but it sounds like he ran with a rough crowd as a teen).Fast forward to this article – to imply that a person can never change in the course of over 30 years of maturing, and continue to hold them fully accountable for their bad actions as a teenager shows a certain lack of empathy of its own.
Still, a lot of us managed to grow up without going on racist beating sprees. Some of us thought that was bad even as a teen. So there’s also that. Not saying I don’t look a little askance at the guy, knowing that about his past.As an actor, I can’t say I’ve ever seen him in anything he was really good in. But he’s never bad either. He’s not a great actor, but he is an effective actor. I get the analysis and suspect it’s kind of spot-on based on his prior work.
On my local library’s Hoopla database, I recently found a little movie called Cowboys, with Steve Zahn as a blue-collar guy whose love for his trans son includes kidnapping the kid when the child’s mother is unable to be so accepting. The two head out on horseback toward the Canadian border. The script has trouble wrapping things up, and the kid could be much better cast, but Zahn (great actor he) and Ann Dowd (as the cop tracking them) keep it all going. It’s worth finding.
Have you been watching White Lotus on HBO right now? Really fun Steve Zahn role!
Wow, Wahlberg doesn’t exactly move my needle on pop culture relevance these days (or ever?), so I was unaware of his past. Yes, it was in his teens, and “it was a different time”, but what a lousy person. I actively dislike him in any movie, so this one is an easy skip anyway.
Mark Wahlberg isn’t up to the emotional legwork of the anti-bullying drama Joe BellA racist hate-crime committer and imagined terrorist-stopper with the range of a pine 2×4 isn’t up to a dramatic challenge?
I WOULD NEVER HAVE GUESSED.
I’m genuinely curious if this review would have been written any differently if you had done it before watching the film.