Heel

The movie’s ironies and cruelties clatter across the screen, but Komasa also allows the audience to consider who it is Chris really wants to train.

Good Boy is doggone exceptional when it comes to the powerhouse acting abilities of Graham and Boon, both of whom take on their roles to showcase opposite ends of the rehabilitation spectrum. But even with talent at the helm both in front of and behind the camera, Kosama’s disjointed thriller is predictable throughout and never reaches the emotionality it seeks from its audience.

Under Komasa’s direction, the mix of fractured fable and terroristic morality play in Bartek Bartosik’s screenplay is absurd but potent, giving Heel enough psychologically twisted juju to nearly always feel like more than the sum of its parts.

Heel wants to have its cake and eat it too, to present this darkly comic absurdity while dipping back into reality only when it suits the film.

What keeps the movie going when the script starts to run out of ink are the brilliant performances all around.

If the concept has a way of grabbing one’s attention, however, the execution proves too uneven to leave a lasting impression. Though Good Boy gets by for a while on the strength of its performances and the sheer oddness of its plot, the flimsiness of its characters drains the film of energy long before its 110 minutes are up.

Like many genre films this decade, “Heel” feels glaringly incomplete.