Review: In 'Joe Bell,' a sympathetic depiction of a bullied teen's suffering are undercut by star Mark Wahlberg's too-tough performance
The “based-on-a-true-story” tearjerker “Joe Bell” is a movie with its heart in the right place, but wrong in so many particulars — most notably the straining-for-Oscar casting of Mark Wahlberg in the title role.
Joe Bell, as played by Wahlberg, is a regular working-class guy from La Grande, Ore., who wants nothing more than to drink a beer and watch the game on TV. So when he’s confronted by his wife, Lola (Connie Britton), to deal with the problems of their 15-year-old son, Jadin (Reid Miller, in a breakout role) — who is being bullied at school because he’s gay. Saying that out loud to his dad is a painful experience, and isn’t helped by Joe’s stock response: Stand up for yourself, and throw a punch if necessary.
Subsequent scenes set at Jadin’s school demonstrate why Joe’s advice is impossible. Most of the football team is involved in this daily harassment, intimidation and physical violence. When they’re not assaulting him, physically and verbally, in the halls of the school, they’re doing it online with a steady stream of comments urging Jadin to kill himself.
And Joe’s attitude at other moments is no help, either. Jadin is one of the few boys on the cheerleading squad. This is an embarrassment to Joe, who sees Jadin practicing cheers with his friend Marcie (Morgan Lily) in the front yard and orders them to move to the backyard.
All that I’ve discussed so far is seen in flashbacks. The “action” of the story is Joe, pushing a cart down a lonely highway. Joe tells people that he’s walking across the country, from La Grande to New York City, stopping where he can to talk to school assemblies about the consequences of bullying and the need for tolerance.
In the film’s first act, writers Diana Ossana and the late Larry McMurtry (who won an Oscar for their adaptation of “Brokeback Mountain”) show Joe on the road with Jadin, telling jokes and singing Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” on the highway. As playful as these scenes are, a viewer suspects a vital bit of information has been omitted — and it doesn’t take too long to learn what that information is.
Director Reinaldo Marcus Green, whose debut feature “Monsters and Men” impressed critics at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, shows a necessary sensitivity to Jadin’s suffering, his yearning to be himself in a school and a town whose intolerance makes that painfully difficult. He also isn’t afraid to dig into the less-heroic parts of Joe’s story, including his short temper and his apparent lack of preparation to become a spokesman for tolerance and understanding.
Alas, Green is saddled with a star, Wahlberg, who seems unable or unwilling to drop his tough-guy facade for even a moment. Green does everything to make us feel for Joe, as he goes through this physical and psychological endurance test on the byways of the west (all filmed in Utah). Even when Joe’s protective wall of masculinity crumbles, and he confronts his own guilt over how he treated Jaden (talking to a Colorado sheriff played by Gary Sinise), Wahlberg’s hamfisted performance can’t give the moment ring the sincerity it needs.
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‘Joe Bell’
★★1/2
Opens Friday, July 23, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language including offensive slurs, some disturbing material, and teen partying. Running time: 93 minutes.