The Dinner **** (2017, Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Hall, Charlie Plummer, Chloë Sevigny) – Movie Review

Guess who’s coming to dinner? Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Steve Coogan and Rebecca Hall are. And it all because their teenage sons, Charlie Plummer, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick and Miles J Harvey, have got into quite a spot of bother.

Coogan plays troubled former history teacher and Linney plays his wife Claire, who meet at a fancy restaurant with his politician older brother Stan (Gere) and his frosty wife Katelyn (Hall).

They two posh married couples have to work out over dinner how to handle a shocking violent crime committed by their sons. The crime was filmed by a camera and shown on TV, but they have not been identified. A lot of heart rending and soul searching follow. That’s it.

For a movie, there is a lot of talk and a long running time of two hours, but it is very good talk and it doesn’t seem long or get draggy.

The acting is of an extremely high standard. Coogan’s casting as Gere’s brother is weird. He’s none too convincing with Gere, and definitely none too American, but he is surprisingly rather good at acting angry, hurt and damaged, pulling off playing a mentally unbalanced character convincingly. Gere and Hall (with too little to do) are impeccable, but it’s Linney who takes the acting honours, brilliant cast against type as a prize monster mother. The boys are good, with Plummer outstanding if only because he has the key role.

It is great that it is all very complex and conflicted, that the complicated characters don’t work out as expected, and indeed that the story doesn’t work out as expected either. That makes it quite an adult, grown-up experience. And it makes it a fine showcase for the acting talent involved.

It would work just as well in the theatre, so you imagine it might be based on a stage play, but actually it is taken from a novel by Herman Koch. Oren Moverman is the writer-director, and he is to be commended for a thoroughly smooth, satisfying, provocative piece of work.

Michael Chernus is entertaining as the maître d’hôtel, but Chloë Sevigny is wasted as Barbara Lohman.

Gere and Linney previously appeared together in Primal Fear (1996) and The Mothman Prophecies (2002).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com