| The People vs Larry Flynt Long at just over two hours and structurally awkward as a string of vignettes spanning fifteen odd years, Milos Forman's film biography of Cincinatti porn king Larry Flynt is nevertheless hugely entertaining thanks to the inveterate talent for outrage of it's wise-cracking protagonist, charismatically portrayed by Woody Harrelson. Able support, both legal and thesp, is provided by Edward Norton as his lawyer and Courtney Love as Flynt's wife proves her mettle in her first screen role since a bit part in 'Sid 'n' Nancy'. Almost as soon as he started Hustler Magazine in the seventies Flynt's life became a catalogue of arrests and lawsuits, from the obscenity charge that nearly put him away for twenty-five years to the fracas with right-wing religious |
| zealot Jerry Falwell (Richard Paul, acutely prissy) that took him to the supreme court in the eighties. This is less a courtroom drama then, than a series of little ones, spiced with some fairly sanitised sleaze and hefty helpings of seventies fab gear. In the center of it all is the increasingly unhinged Flynt, a seriously left-field crusader for fifth amendment rights, drug adddicted, crippled and a perpetrator of often brilliant outrages. With Oliver Stone on board as producer, it's no surprise to find that there are some sententious points being made here about good old American democratic values. On the whole though, Forman is happy to paddle in murkier waters than Stone, playing down righteous indignation to portray the more complex charms of a difficult, idiosyncratic and deeply likable maverick. |