By Jake Wilson
PALMER ★★½
(MA), 110 minutes
As an actor, Justin Timberlake still rarely receives the credit he deserves. Maybe the image of him as a strutting pop star does get in the way when we first see him playing a role like the title character in Palmer – a onetime college footballer who is released from jail after twelve years and returns to his Louisiana hometown, moving into a trailer park with his church-going grandmother (June Squibb) and working as a janitor.
Justin Timberlake and Ryder Allen in Palmer.Credit: Apple TV+
But Timberlake himself grew up in rural Tennessee, and his credibility here is never really in question. There’s a lot we’re not told straight away about Palmer, including the nature of the crime he was jailed for, but the essentials are evident from the first few scenes. Without making a big production of it, Timberlake lets us see his lingering shame, his mostly suppressed anger, and his determination to turn his life around: it’s there in the way he carries himself, and the look in his eyes.
Directed by Fisher Stevens from a script by Cheryl Guerriero, Palmer is being released straight to streaming in Australia, and in spirit isn’t that far removed from the “issue-based” telemovies of a generation ago. This becomes evident from the moment the conventionally masculine Palmer crosses paths with a small boy named Sam (Ryder Allen) who in another context might nowadays be labelled “gender non-conforming” – meaning for instance that he enjoys watching cartoons about princesses, and has a hankering to dress up as one.
In an ideal world, such inclinations might not be labelled at all, or treated as any kind of a big deal. But to its credit, the film never jumps to glib conclusions about who Sam is or might become. Nor can I doubt that its heart is in the right place, even if there’s a degree of hokey sentimentality in the premise that Sam’s precocious confidence in his identity inspires Palmer in turn to stand up to those who see him as a lost cause.
While Stevens has had a long and mainly honourable career as a character actor, as a director he’s come a long way since his 2002 debut, the disastrous romantic comedy Just a Kiss. Working with the experienced cinematographer Tobias A. Schliessler, he gives the film a distinctive look – widescreen, often handheld, reliant on natural light – that approximates realism yet evokes something of how it feels to be Palmer, his anxiety and his sense of isolation.
In general, too, Stevens works well with the actors, although Juno Temple, a notable talent in her own right, is a long way from matching Timberlake’s restraint, playing Sam’s drug-addicted mother as a white trash grotesque as if she were back in William Friedkin’s Killer Joe.