The Substance of Fire

This sensitive, sometimes troubling family drama is one of the rare movies dealing with intelligent adults tackling lifelike problems.

In an era when films reduce the aged to comic cranks, Rifkin is heroic--the Lear of grumpy old men.

Consequently, your reaction to the film will pretty much hinge on your opinion of the play. Ho-hum is my humble verdict.

But what presumably was powerful in Jon Robin Baitz's play has been diluted in opening it up for the screen.

In the case of Jon Robin Baitz's script, adapted from his play, in spite of the fact that he made considerable alterations in the text to open it up to cinematic possibilities, the movie disappoints in much the same way the play did.

The screen version feels like a rewrite made to make the tale more palatable to the "mindless moviegoing masses," which prompts the question: Is the film a truer vision of Baitz's tale of an uncompromising man or a version in which the truer vision was compromised?

But despite a compelling opening, as a movie it loses focus and purpose as it proceeds.