A Good One

A couple nights ago I watched a few movies, and I stumbled upon a half-way decent one in the bunch. I had some notion that it might be all right because it had Martin Sheen and Jimmy Smits. Smits never has been in a lot of big movies so far as I know- he's known for "LA Law", "NYPD Blue" and "The West Wing"- but he's a fairly reasonable performer who there's every reason to believe could do a decent job in a movie. Sheen of course has been in some classics (and, of course, also starred on The West Wing).

This film was called "The Believers". I figured it was some horror conspiracy movie, and that's about what it amounts to. Sheen plays a therapist working for the police, which is handy since he mostly acts like a cop anyway. He stumbles upon a Santeria-based cult that is comprised mainly of wealthy New Yorkers. They practice human sacrifice to get a head in life, and apparently that works. This is probably not sounding great so far.

Some of it is admittedly cheesy and bizarre, like Sheen's wife accidentally getting electrocuted by touching a malfunctioning coffee machine while standing barefoot in a puddle of milk. Eventually it got to a point where the creepy goings-on actually began to grow effective, and I was rather unsettled by some of the imagery (which I won't spoil). The movie, despite being made in the late 80's, has a 70's feel, which I think works for it reasonably well.

Regrettably, there's some racist stuff in the movie, and a lot of misrepresentation of religion and culture. That being the case, it's hard to recommend the movie entirely without representation, but I can vouch for it with that caveat. I admit it's a big one. You ought to enjoy particularly Smits, Richard Masur as Sheen's lawyer, and some legitimately horrifying visual effects. I know I did. Consider it a slight effort to balance the scales after the many more purely bad movies I've recounted.