Malek stands out in an offbeat indie
Rami Malek haunts “Buster’s Mal Heart” like an alien being just getting to know human form. In this finely calibrated indie from writer-director Sarah Adina Smith, the Emmy-winning “Mr. Robot” star is used to disconcertingly good effect, his large, lidded eyes like reservoirs of hope and pain.
If Malek’s role — a mountain man nicknamed Buster who rants about an upcoming apocalyptic Inversion, but who was once a dedicated family man and hotel concierge named Jonah — reminds you of his split-personality TV role, it’s less a glomming-on than a burnishing of the actor’s gift of conveying paralyzing rootlessness.
In the Jonah scenes, Malek is a clean-cut figure dreaming of a better life for wife Marty (Kate Lyn Shiel) and their toddler daughter but drawn to a mysterious conspiracy theorist figure (DJ Qualls), who feeds his nagging belief that his fate is mechanistic and predetermined.
As the present-day Buster, nesting in empty vacation houses, armed and rattled by visions, Malek makes for a compellingly warped figure of grief and derangement. Though evocatively photographed (by Shaheen Seth) and laced with dark humor about the ineffectiveness of religion, Smith’s desire to be twisty and mind-bending often shows. But it’s a confident weirdness that “Buster’s Mal Heart” boasts as it dissects a damaged soul for signs of what’s eternal and what’s triggered when a man breaks in two.
“Buster’s Mal Heart.” Not rated. Run time: 1 hour, 37 minutes. Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica; and Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena.