Over the years there have been a lot of films about authors.  Hollywood has been obsessed with telling the story of how these writers have gotten where they are in history. The latest author to get the big screen treatment is Flannery O’Connor.  Famous for Everything That Rises Must Converge, Wise Blood, and Good Country People. During the events of this biopic, she writes short stories that she combines into A Good Man Is Hard to Find. This movie is directed by Ethan Hawke and stars his daughter Maya Hawke in the lead role.

The story picks up when Flannery O’Connor (Maya Hawke) is a seventeen-year-old girl. She takes a ride to New York City to talk to her literary agent/editor played by Alessandro Nivola. She’s trying to get her first novel published. With no luck, she tucks her tail between her legs and comes back home to her mother Regina (Laura Linney. Her mother notices she’s sick and has something wrong with her. It turns out she’s got lupus. She ends up battling this disease for the rest of her life while still trying to become a published author.

Maya Hawke is a great young actress. She’s had turns in Stranger Things as Robin Buckley, Asteroid City as June Douglas, and Maestro as Jamie Bernstein the daughter of Leonard Bernstein, and many more. She gets it from her parents Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. She has the ability to be likable even when her character isn’t that likable. She plays O’Connor as a bit disgruntled because of her disease, but she’s also sympathetic as well. She’s dealing with a lot and the performance shows how difficult of a character this is to play. The hair and makeup she’s wearing and costumes help her become this woman in the 50s and 60s. Hawke becomes this woman and that’s one of the best parts of the film.

This isn’t the first film Ethan Hawke has ever directed, but hee has a distinct style that he’s going for here regarding the look and feel of the movie. Being that it’s set in a specific era in time it has to look authentic to that period. This film looks incredible as far as the camera work and production design go. The Dust Bowl feel of the story is very prevalent.  Filming in Kentucky helped because it gave the movie the muted feel I believe Hawke and Company were looking for. The cinematography was amazing by Steve Cosens. Even when there are red, blues, and greens it still looks like this era. I was blown away by how this period was brought to life in this biopic so well. It helped pull me into this world that the film took place in.

Hawke as a writer combined with Shelby Gaines added a few wrinkles into the story to make it not a typical biopic. They used some of the short stories O’Connor wrote as part of the film’s storytelling.  How she was inspired to write these short stories. Specifically how she had struggles with men in her life. Men only saw her one way. Not as the intelligent woman she truly was. During this time in history, men ruled the roost and women did what they were told. Raised children and took care of the house and everything that entailed. The reenactments of her stories were pretty funny at times, but they definitely drove home the mentality of the thinking of the day.

Wildcat has a lot of big-name actors in small or cameo roles. Hawke called in some favors from friends he’d known for many years. Steve Zahn and Cooper Hoffman, the son of Phillip Seymour Hoffman,  play two of the men in the short story segments.  They are the reason she wrote about struggles with men in her life. Vincent D’onofrio and Liam Neeson play a sheriff and a priest respectively in the film. They add nice humor and respectability to a movie that is already pretty respectable.  Linney on the other hand plays a lot of different roles all a variation on the mother of O’Connor. She seems like she’s having a blast hamming it up in all of these separate roles with different hair makeup and clothes to make her look distinctly different which each character she portrays. The cast is fantastic all the way around.

Wildcat is a good biopic, but not a great one. It suffers from what a lot of biopics have suffered from in recent years. It doesn’t know where it’s going sometimes. It’s focused on O’Connor’s story then it veers off and goes to the short story reenactments. The narration by Maya Hawke helps, but the story is still slow and relatively boring. Some stories just aren’t meant to be made into movies. The cast all the way around are excellent even though the film isn’t. Hawke as a director is someone who I’m looking forward to seeing what he does next. As a writer, he leaves a little to be desired. Maya Hawke though is someone I’ll keep looking forward to seeing her next film and or television projects.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen