Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A quality made haunting indie art-house film debut for director-writer
William R. Pace (a graduate of NYU’s film program), who chronicles
the shooting spree of an average Midwestern young man named Jeremiah William
‘Charming Billy’ Starkman (Michael Hayden). The film opens with Jeremy
perched atop a water town overlooking a country field and with a high-powered
rifle he’s mowing down innocent people as they exit their vehicles for
a reason he can’t articulate. We learn through flashback that he’s just
killed his pregnant wife Linda (Sally Murphy) and parents (Chelcie Ross
and Bernadette O’Malley). Through further flashbacks, that intercut with
the stylized killing spree, we trace his early childhood memories, where
he liked to play with the foreign-accented neighborhood laundry lady (Oksana
Fedunyszyn) by running in the yard between the clean white sheets
as she hung them out to dry. The friendly lady gave him the nickname he
loves of Charming Billy, as she sang him that song called Billy Boy. The
first-born child named Billy died at the age of one, something that deeply
affected Jeremy. The youngster was also troubled by his father’s negativity
and verbally abusive way he treated him. Not going to college and being
married, Jeremy struggles financially to provide for his family–holding
down a job as a laundry driver and as a clerk in a video store. Both jobs
serve to embarrass him, as in the laundry job he meets a former schoolmate
Duane just as he’s picking up soiled towels in a restaurant toilet and
in the video store he loses his cool as he has to deal with an irate customer
to defend himself from being incompetent–only to find out later another
clerk screwed up and the customer was right. How this seemingly nice guy
cracks up, is convincingly presented as a case of the mind snapping due
to the cumulative effects of his depressive life. The only one Jeremy felt
comfortable being around was his grandfather (Tony Mockus), a big bear
of a man with a Santa Claus white beard and a wry smile on his kisser.
When grandfather goes down with a debilitating stroke and there’s no one
else to talk to, the only way out for him becomes the bad decision to go
on a suicidal mission on the water tower.
This original and deeply moving film does its job of letting us know
the killer’s thinking as best it could without seeming academic or phony.
Michael Hayden does a superb job of bringing sympathy to his character,
even when he’s firing away at a child running for his life across the field.
Cowriters Douglas Huebner and Thomas R. Rondinella offer a tight script
that leaves room for the viewer to form their own opinions on what led
to Jeremy’s downfall, especially when others have faced much worse upbringings
and came through it just fine.