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St. Vincent poster

CAST
JADEN LIEBERHER
BILL MURRAY
DAVID BAROSSO
TERRENCE HOWARD
MELISSA McCARTHY
CHRIS O’DOWD
KIMBERLY QUINN
LENNY VENITO
NAOMI WATTS

WRITTEN BY
THEODORE MELFI

PRODUCED BY
PETER CHERNIN
THEODORE MELFI
FRED ROOS
JENNO TOPPING

DIRECTED BY
THEODORE MELFI

GENRE
COMEDY
DRAMA

RATED
AUS:M
UK:12A
USA:PG-13

RUNNING TIME
102 MIN

ST. VINCENT (2014)

Led by an in form Bill Murray, St. Vincent is a funny and moving reminder that in the crabbiest of men can live a generous soul.

Bill Murray has made a career playing the wise-ass, but rarely the asshole. Murray also comes from a large Irish family rich in Catholic belief, with one of his sisters a Dominican nun.  St. Vincent offers Murray the opportunity to play both an asshole and a (lukewarm) Catholic in Vincent McKenna, a cranky Vietnam veteran who spends his days drinking, gambling money owed to loan sharks and banging pregnant Russian hooker Daka (Naomi Watts). Waking up with a bloody face and hangover are a daily occurrence.

When MRI tech Maggie (Melissa McCarthy) and her son Oliver (Joeden Lieberher) move in next door, Vincent views it as an opportunity to make some cash by offering to babysit Oliver while Maggie works nightshifts. She naively agrees. As expected, Vincent is not babysitter material, dragging young Oliver to his local bar and race track. He learns how to fight and swear like a sailor. But young Oliver also learns there are many shades to this most peculiar man.

Murray plays the role of Vincent with a seeming ease, but there’s a lot going on with his performance. It’s not easy to play a character that can draw hate and love, scorn and smiles, anger and compassion.

Writer/director Theodore Melfi couldn’t have dreamed of a better actor to play his leading character, and the same goes with the rest of his cast with Naomi Watts proving to be quite the comedic actress as the Russian prostitute who bemoans how pregnancy has cramped her style, and Melissa McCarthy delivering her best screen work yet with a much more subdued, dramatic turn compared to her usual fluster.

Most impressive of all though is young Jaeden Lieberher, who at 11 years of age formidably takes care of his own amongst his veteran co-stars, especially an in form Murray.

His Oliver finds a goodness, a heart underneath Vincent’s prickly exterior that others don’t see, that saint hiding under the sinner. So when Oliver’s charming Catholic school teacher Brother Geraghty (played by Irish scene stealer Chris O’Dowd, the very same man who equated religion with racism, go figure…) assigns his students the task of writing about saints amongst us, it’s no surprise that Vincent is his man.

2014 has been a year where religion has been portrayed in a much more positive light than usual, and there is no doubt that St. Vincent has a profoundly Catholic heart that beats a strong message that one does not need to be the purest of souls to be a saint among men.

***1/2
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