The Benefactor **½ (2015, Richard Gere, Dakota Fanning, Theo James) – Movie Review

Richard Gere looks as old as Methusalah as Franny, an eccentric, dope-smoking, stinking rich philanthropist who meddles in the lives of a newly-married young couple in an attempt to relive his past. Dakota Fanning and Theo James play the couple in question, Olivia and Luke, quite appealingly.

The clue here is that Fanning plays the daughter of his best friends, a couple killed five years earlier in a car crash that maimed him too. Franny is quite happy to take up again with Olivia when she gets in touch to reconnect and tell him she’s got married. Franny takes quite a shine to young doctor Luke, not surprisingly as James looks easy to take a shine too, though quite what his motives are remains totally obscure. Fanning even gets a bit sidelined in this Gere-James bromance.

[Spoiler alert) Franny is shown as a man with a heart of gold as large as his bank balance, then it’s revealed that he’s a bit of a hidden monster, but then it’s revealed that he’s a bit of a real softie with a heart of gold.

Writer-director Andrew Renzi’s comedy drama is a weird one, whose purpose remains mysterious, but it is not wholly unenjoyable. Actually, the movie’s pretty bonkers, but that’s OK too. It’s likeable and entertaining enough in its own unique way, with its literate script helped along by the Sundance setup. And, with Dakota and Theo in, some younger viewers might be attracted to The Benefactor.

This is the kind of movie that encourages us to learn something. So, just to be educational (I just looked this up!), Methuselah’s life span was recorded in Genesis (5:27) as 969 years, making him in legend the longest-lived human. I think that means he should be in the Guinness Book of Records if he isn’t already.

I hope Gere feels he could go back to playing in a mainstream cop thriller or Western or something now. Just because he’s gone a bit white doesn’t mean he needs to give up on big movies. Or does it? Over to you, Richard.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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