Critics reviews

The Mend is impressive. Its abrupt, chaotic movement has been compared usefully to that of Arnaud Desplechin, and it consistently foregrounds the vulnerable human body in a way that few contemporary, American non-genre films do.

Anyone who's a fan of Cassavetes or Allen can definitely see The Mend and get some kick out of it. In many ways, it's an odd homage on how those two revolutionized the American independent film and New York relationship drama, while in other ways it's bent on turning the whole formula on its head. It doesn't quite succeed at the latter, but the former is revelatory and at times captivating in what it reveals about its own conventions.

Magary's darkly comic drama starts with the familiar premise—a Tom & Jerry-like pair of mismatched brothers—and spins it into strange brew. The film's jagged rhythms, stylistic flourishes, and unexpected tonal shifts keep you guessing as to who or what will collide next and where it's all headed... The Mend is both a master class in staging in confined spaces and a sharp portrait of the weird energy of New York in the 'oughts.

THE MEND establishes itself as a film of uncommon originality and aesthetic diversity... Much of the fun to be had in watching THE MEND comes from observing the expert performances of Lucas and Plunkett, who infinitely complicate the initial impressions their characters make even as the film studiously avoids anything resembling a conventional resolution.

It was immediately clear that the film is awesome, a brilliant script and direction with endless capacity for indirection and reorientation. . . . Overall, an amazing feat of creating a purely aesthetic distance on everything by relocating our identification into a mist of characterization.

One of the very best American independent films you'll see this year, John Magary's The Mend, takes what could have easily been a mundane tale of brotherly dysfunction and turns it into something abstract and electrifying.

Magary's ambition overwhelms his insight; he dourly delights in the mess that the characters make of their lives but lends them little fantasy or psychological resonance. Despite the willful worldliness of the high-stakes emotional games, the movie's downbeat street poetry devolves into moody clichés.

I saw the picture for a second time earlier this week with My Lovely Wife, and her occasional gasps and starts-in-her-seat brought home how powerful and powerfully affecting and sometimes raw a comedy The Mend really is. After the screening, she commented on its richness; the movie, she observed, has a lot of "treats," incidental details that pay off later on... It's a simultaneously tough and blithe movie about damaged people.

The Mend plays like an American take on the work of French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin (Kings And Queen, A Christmas Tale). Desplechin's pictures can be as maddening as they are exhilarating, and the same is true of The Mend, which sometimes seems in danger of over dosing on its own stylistic flourishes. Nonetheless, it's a hugely promising introduction to a director who's just getting started.

Mr. Lucas gives Mat a stubborn heedlessness that's past its sell-by date, while Ms. Owen brings an amusing officiousness to her dialogue, suggesting someone who hasn't figured out as much as she lets on. But no one has really figured much out, in Mr. Magary's generous sprawl of scenes, which are playfully stretched and cut into different shapes with the lurching vigor of life.

Magary repeatedly contrasts events occurring on screen with its cacophonous string score, a dissonance akin to the one you may experience while watching the story unfold. As The Mend's focus winnows down to nothing beyond Mat and Alan drinking, doing drugs, and picking fights with innocent strangers, every frame comes to hum, perversely and organically, with the tension they bring to the most mundane of actions, such as a late-night dash for ice cream.

As [Mat and his brother] unpack the baggage from their upbringing, and face up to crises in their relationships with women and each other, the tension rises in a manner as neatly structured as a single-set play, with the same scarifying emotional content and paint-strippingly funny dialogue. But Magary shifts adroitly to moments of cinematic playfulness, from voiceovered text messages to personable, vivid supporting characters.