Powder

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Powder

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Powder

Bradford Tatum, Brandon Smith (I), Jeff Goldblum, Lance Henriksen, Mary Steenburgen

A young bald albino boy with unique powers shakes up the rural community he lives in.

Id: 5606837

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Powder Recent Reviews
  • irisheyes686
    August 10, 2008
    irisheyes686
    Really sad movie, but it's very realistic in the way people treat those who are different. It makes you realize how much you take for granted.
  • StaisilD
    June 3, 2008
    StaisilD
    Sean Patrick Flanery plays Powder; an albino who was born shortly after his mother was killed by a lightning strike. Because of this, Powder is gifted with the ability to generate and channel electricity, and is also clairvoyant to an extent. Shunned by his father, Powder is sent...( read more) to live with his grandfather, who dies leaving Powder in the hands of Jessie Caldwell (Mary Steenburgen) who runs a school. Because of his odd appearance, Powder is shunned by most of the other students and quickly becomes an outcast. The supporting cast are good too Lance Henriksen's leather-beaten roughness is well-suited to the Southern sheriff part and Jeff Goldblum gives another of his appealingly hyped performances. It is a slick little piece, perhaps a little burdened with clichés, that frequently points to the director Victor Salva's roots in thriller/horror films. These visual references stop the film from becoming too saccharine and help to build tension effectively. Unfortunately, his previous films weren't the only aspect of the director's past that shadowed him into this film.
  • mistershinobi
    January 15, 2008
    mistershinobi
    Great performances but stupid, unrealistic, illogic, lame, poorly developed plot. An awful movies... but the performances are really cool.
  • armybratgeo
    August 6, 2007
    armybratgeo
    sigh, I cried like a little baby the first time, the second, the third...you get the point
  • timandterrybarker
    July 31, 2007
    timandterrybarker
    Wow, here's a movie that had completely excaped my memory. I hated the crap out of it!
  • TheQueensShilling
    December 17, 2009
    TheQueensShilling

    ...( read more)style="width:280px;">




    POWDER (1995)
    GENRES: FANTASY, SCI FI, WEIRD, DRAMA
    DIRECTED BY: Victor Salva
    FEATURING: Lance Henriksen, Jeff Goldblum, Mary Steenburgen, and Sean Patrick Flanery
    PLOT: A supernaturally gifted teen misfit fights against the grain when he is forcibly integrated into a callous, backward community. A strange blend of fantasy and drama, Powder has shadings of The Enigma of Casper Hauser, Carrie, and The Man Who Fell To Earth.

    COMMENTS: In a situation reminiscent of Casper Hauser's enigma in the 1975 film, Jeremy Reed (Flanery) is discovered sequestered in his grandmother's basement upon her death in a podunk Texas town. A bright, sensitive boy, he has been raised without contact with the outside world, with which he is acquainted only through books. He happens to be albino, and not just like Edgar Winter -he is mime white.

    Additionally, he is hairless. Because of his unsettling appearance he attracts the unbecoming nickname, "Powder." He also attracts static electricity. His father rejected him because of his appearance; his grandparents sheltered him. Contact with the outside world is novel and very troublesome for Powder and for those who meet him.

    The film opens with his premature birth after his mother is struck by lightning. This turns out to be foreshadowing: concepts of electricity and energy are dispersed throughout the film. Powder's body exudes an interactive electromagnetic field. Wristwatches run backward when he's upset, televisions overload with static, electronic devices run haywire. In a discussion with his teacher, the instructor tells Powder that Einstein allegedly said he wasn't sure death exists, because energy never ceases to exist, and that if man ever reaches a point where he can use all of his brain, he would be pure energy and not need a body. This catches Powder's attention.

    Powder is still a minor, and not exactly the picture of conformity. Ideally, he needs to be in a progressive, tolerant environment; so, of course, the local authorities lock him up in a violent rural boys' home that's more of a reform school than an orphanage. As one can imagine, he is welcomed with open arms by the crude, hostile ruffians. Well not exactly; they harass and torment him incessantly with murder in their collective eye.

    While he is a ward of the state, two staffers played by Steenburgen and Goldblum try to help him. Powder takes aptitude tests. His unusually high scores indicate that he has a profound intellect, but nobody believes it. His test results are challenged by a panel of hostile state goons. Meanwhile, his tormenting bullies in the state boys' home discover that he can defend himself with telekinetic electromagnetic powers.

    Like a faith healer, Powder cures a dying woman. This development adds a religious element to the film that complicates efforts to comprehend Powder's true nature. While his in vitro exposure to lightning bestowed him with electromagnetic powers, he has other abilities as well, including psychic ones. Difficult to classify and out of his element, Powder is like a stranded alien.

    As Powder and the confused, disturbed locals continue to clash, the chasm between them grows wider. Many are awed by and fearful of his unusual talents. All Powder wants to do is go home and live in seclusion. He escapes the group home and tries to return, but his family property has been foreclosed upon. Some town officials encourage him to run away, others want him back in the boys' home.

    Near the end of the story there's a suggestion that Powder is just too unique for this world; he's portrayed a little like a Christ figure. It is dubious that this is really what the filmmakers had in mind. Powder is a science fiction fantasy about nonconformity and social rejection, not a religious allegory.

    Like the title character of Brian DePalma's Carrie, Powder is gifted and different, ostracized and misunderstood. Powder, however, does not take a spectacular revenge based on his seething resentment. Instead, he strives and strives to escape somehow, always trying to find a away to transcend his dilemma.

    The conflicts, uncertainty, tension and turmoil come to a flashpoint when a huge thunderhead approaches the town and Powder rushes into the storm. In a spectacular cinematic sequence, many uncertain elements of Powder's riddle merge in an unexpected way that is unconventionally conclusive and magical.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    "Imagine Edward Scissorhands under the control of a mainstream director rather than someone offbeat and eccentric like Tim Burton. The result would have been just another motion picture about a prototypical misfit trying to find his niche . . . a movie with a lot of manipulation and too many easy answers. Powder is such a film." -James Berardinelli, Reel Views





    POWDER - (1995) - CLIP - CLICK TO PLAY

    Thanks and a tip of the hat to my editor Greg S. at 366WeirdMovies.com.
  • jesljohn
    December 16, 2009
    jesljohn
    i love this movie one of my favs
  • luisvargas2u
    December 11, 2009
    luisvargas2u
    I loved this movie, interesting story, a little surprising at the end tough
  • rylanjp
    November 26, 2009
    rylanjp
    A deeply moving story, thought provoking, and unforgettable.
  • Nenebelle
    November 23, 2009
    Nenebelle
    Recommended by WitchfulThinking.
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