Affliction (1997)

Cautiously Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Paul Schrader

Writers: Paul Schrader, Russell Banks

Cinematographer: Paul Sarossy

Composer: Michael Brook

Cast: Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, James Coburn, Willem Dafoe, Jim True, Mary Beth Hurt, Holmes Osborne, Brigid Tierney

A hard drinking small town (sort of) policeman with a throbbing tooth ache, who was brought up in an abusive, testosterone filled household, and is in the midst of a custody battle over his daughter, becomes convinced that his best friend killed a wealthy businessman in what had been reported as a hunting accident, and slowly but surely begins to alienate all of those around him, in Schrader's diverting and well made if not entirely convincing adaptation of Banks’s novel. Iain.Stott