FIRST REFORMED **

Perhaps the only real surprise about Paul Schrader's "First Reformed" is that he didn't make it sooner, considering his Calvinistic background and his penchant for serving up Old Testament sermons in the guise of 20th Century Morality Tales full of the sex, violence, and fury he apparently is railing against. "First Reformed" is no different; near the end there's even a nod towards "Taxi Driver" as Ethan Hawkes' tortured minister drives through his town at night. Actually, the whole second half is a virtual remake of "Taxi Driver", Schrader's first great screenplay, just as the first half is like a remake of both Bergman's "Winter Light" and Bresson's "Diary of a Country Priest" and with a very distinct Scandinavian feel to it, (there are a lot of white wooden buildings and a lot of vast rooms, sparsely furnished like the empty spaces in the lives of its protagonists).

Hawkes is the Rev. Toller who has never quite got over the death of his son in Iraq. He may be dying of cancer and spends his nights drinking and recording his doubts in a journal. One day a young woman, (Amanda Seyfried), asks him to speak to her husband who is suffering from depression. The encounter triggers a series of events that turns the film into a kind of ecological thriller, a twist I felt a bit too neat seeing we are in Trump's America.

It's certainly not a bad film, just a very obvious one. I think I would have preferred it had it simply been a remake of "Winter Light" or "Diary of a Country Priest" but by drawing attention to his own work in such a blatant fashion Schrader diminishes the film's effect and yet at the same time part of me quite liked the thriller element he introduces as well as the streak of black humor running through the picture. Hawkes is excellent and all the supporting players are fine but even with these touches of humor this isn't an easy watch nor, sadly, is it one of Schrader's better films.