Review: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

Werner Herzog's latest film My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is already opening in a few theaters while his previous film, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, is still playing first-run houses. Who can explain the minds of film distributors. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done may benefit from the buzz of the other film and gain more interest than it deserves. The movie opens Friday at Alamo Ritz.

A psuedo-cop procedural smashed with a psychological drama, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is the tale of a murdered woman that turns into a standoff with her disturbed son. Werner Herzog wrote the screenplay with Herbert Golder, but it feels more like a partnership with Executive Producer David Lynch, right down to the casting of Grace Zabriskie (Twin Peaks, Inland Empire) as the murder victim. 

Using flashbacks to expand on the tragedy, and pairing it with a classic Greek play production, the story of Brad McCullum's deterioration unfold. Michael Shannon, who plays Brad, is normally an eerily nuanced performer who delivers disturbed characters with incredible nuance and authenticity, but unlike his performances in Bug and Revolutionary Road, is more caricature in this film than Zabriskie.  In fact, all the acting is two dimensional and over the top and no more nuanced than the Greek chorus in the rehearsals of the Orestes production, despite an outstanding cast that includes Shannon, Willem Dafoe, Loretta Devine, Chloë Sevigny and Udo Kier.

Fans of Herzog's Bad Lieutenant will appreciate some of the humor, including the pet pink flamingos and Brad's perception of them, and a reference to dancing and heaven that mirrors a particularly memorable moment in Bad Lieutenant. Unlike the cohesive outrageousness in that film, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is chocked full of randomness, including an extended B-roll scene of a marketplace in Kashgar, China that has no apparent relevance to the film at all.

Herzog is one of the most uneven filmmakers of his time, and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is not going to be remembered as a highlight. It's much more The Wild Blue Yonder than Rescue Dawn or The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.