DVD Review: “The Education of Charlie Banks”

Posted by staticblog

on June 17, 2009M at 3:07 pm

education-of-charlie-banks

Rating: 64
When reviewing “The Education of Charlie Banks,” it’s hard to avoid discussing this coming-of-age story as if one has just witnessed a badger reciting the Magna Carta — after all, this is the shockingly strong directorial debut by Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst. The rap-rock blusterer displays a sharp eye for period detail and narrative flow in this story about class consciousness and the ways of a sociopath.

Jesse Eisenberg (“Adventureland”) possesses a flair for playing young men like Charlie Banks, who is so awkward it actually endears him to the cool kids. The privileged Charlie has a complicated relationship with Mick (Jason Ritter), a brutal working-class punk who Charlie both fears and reveres. Mick sees Charlie as his entry into a better life, but the disruptive sparks in Mick’s mind wreak havoc on Charlie and his friends (Christopher Marquette, Eva Amurri), and Charlie’s decision to withhold key information about Mick allows a bad situation to spill over.

In his relaxed and thoughtful commentary with Ritter, Durst offers gracious appreciations of his actors’ work — it’s as if everything that came before in Bizkit’s “Nookie,” “Break Stuff” and “Rollin’” was just another performance. While his follow-up, “The Longshots,” was a predictable sports underdog film, “Charlie Banks” proves that Durst could soon have a significantly other future.

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