A fall from grace for extraordinary De Niro

PERHAPS one’s expectations are raised by names such as Robert De Niro and Julianne Moore. It’s tough to accept that your heroes have feet of clay. Even though De Niro hasn’t made a good movie for many years, blockbusters such as Taxi Driver or Raging Bull are what you cling to.

It seems like all his energy is going into his Tribeca film festival which has taken on a much larger than expected life of its own, but I guess he has to do the odd movie to pay the rent.

All of this is thumbsuck of course, but how else does one account for the fall from grace of such an extraordinary actor. Not that Being Flynn didn’t have any promise, yet one never gets to grips with the problems of the absent father, Jonathan Flynn (De Niro) and his drifting son (Dano).

As for Moore, don’t take her name as part of the cast list too seriously, this is a story of father and son and not much more gets the time of day.

Flynn is a writer, in fact if you have to take his word for it, one of the three best in the world – ever. Not that he’s ever published, but that doesn’t seem to bother him.

Nothing much does, not even the fact that it is at a homeless shelter where he and his son get to know one another for the first time.

It’s an old, old story, perhaps just too tired. Even though the movie tries to get away from some of the cliches, it stumbles slapbang into the centre of others.