Dominic Murphy’s pseudo-biopic is as visually assured as it is audacious, but behind the slickly edited imagery, the debutant’s storytelling is exposed by shallow characterisation.
Comment
09/25/09
White Lightnin' (2009)
85
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:13
Fresh:11
Rotten:2
Average Rating:6.8/10
Reviews for White Lightnin'
1 - 13 (sorted by date)
This debut British feature weaves sundry biographical details into an awkward cross-hatch of oblique celluloid portrait and backwoods horror thriller.
09/25/09
From its bleakly comic beginning to its fire-and-brimstone ending, this artful trailer-trash quasi-biopic will set your heart pounding and your feet tapping.
09/25/09
If you thought Deliverance was too subtle, too refined, too delicate, and that the hillbillies in it were far too much like characters from Jane Austen, then this is for you.
09/25/09
Seething with blighted fervour and over-ripe with religious wrath, the wild, elemental imagery generates something truly disturbing. With its strange religious overtones and inevitably fitful conclusion, White Lightnin’ is elusive and bleak.
09/25/09
Former commercials director Dominic Murphy has conjured up a brutally compelling tale distinguished by a manically unhinged performance from British actor Edward Hogg.
09/25/09
A psychedelic, sepia-toned horror show, touring the dark corners of his mind and those of the white trash world in which he lives.
09/25/09
Not your conventional music biopic. In fact, it’s increasingly hard to know what’s fact or fiction about White’s life as Murphy’s film unfolds.
09/25/09
A surreal but searing biopic.
09/25/09
In White Lightnin’, style and content meet, blend and writhe in the memory, a haunting nightmare.
09/25/09
There are flashes of brilliance in the direction, but the film's excesses make it difficult to watch at times and the end result is somewhat exhausting.
09/25/09
Loosely based on a real person, this unhinged drama gets increasingly lurid and grisly as it progresses. It's riveting, inventive filmmaking, but not remotely easy to watch.
09/25/09
An amusingly nutty aberration of the traditional follow-your-dreams story arc.
09/25/09
1 - 13 (sorted by date)
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