Paranoid Park
Grade: B-

Few American directors have blazed a more unpredictable career path than Gus Van Sant. After the indie sensation Drugstore Cowboy and the queer classic My Own Private Idaho, the gay Portland resident made a series of hit-or-miss Hollywood vehicles that ranged from the brilliant To Die For to the excruciatingly formulaic Finding Forrester.
Since 2002 he has stuck with low-budget experimental projects, yielding both stunning (Elephant) and numbing (Last Days) results. His latest, Paranoid Park, is a cross between Crime and Punishment and Lords of Dogtown, with a Portland teenage skate punk named Alex standing in for good ol’ Raskolnikov.
Van Sant based his screenplay on a novel by Blake Nelson. The nonlinear story follows Alex in the aftermath of a train yard skirmish in which he accidentally causes a security guard’s gruesome death by striking him with a skateboard.
Filmed at easily identifiable Portland locales like The House of Louis restaurant and the skate park underneath the east end of the Burnside Bridge, Paranoid Park employs a cast of unknowns. Van Sant tracked down some of the young actors with My Space ads, and the resulting performances often spell out the risks inherent in this casting maneuver. Most of the acting is serviceable. It’s just not memorable, and in some cases it’s downright painful to watch the kids try so hard and fail to look cool and natural at the same time.
From a technical standpoint Paranoid Park is frequently impressive. In the skateboarding sequences, for instance, Van Sant achieves a hypnotic mood with slow-motion photography and dreamy electronica music. But eventually the film’s formidable visual panache sticks out like a sore thumb because it’s all in the service of a mediocre story about a bunch of uncharismatic brats. It’s virtually impossible to muster concern for them.
There is no obvious queer content in the film, though Van Sant tosses in one ambiguous scene where one of Alex’s male friends shoots Alex a couple of longing glances during a car ride.
Next up for Van Sant is the long-delayed biopic about assassinated gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, starring Sean Penn in the title role.