Master Gardener

Master Gardener supposedly has a contemporary setting. Yet it feels out of time, or belonging to a long gone era. Part of that is the profession of its lead character, and part is Mrs. Haverhill. Both seem like relics from another time and place.

The scale of ideas is big. American social and racial frictions are entertainingly engaged as we work our way towards a shoot-em-up denouement. At 76, more than 20 films into his storied career, Paul Schrader can still deliver a sucker punch.

Paul Schrader wants me to forgive [this character]. No, I don't forgive him. And this is just sloppy filmmaking.

I wish Master Gardener had the wit and courage of Schrader ’s earlier works, instead of relying on some half-baked ideas about masculinity, race and age-gap romance

The weakest of Schrader’s stories foregrounding strong, silent, troubled men.

The atmosphere is initially alluring yet, as the violence begins, this becomes not the film you'd naturally expect or desire — a stiff, stilted drama.

Master Gardener needed more time for these characters to grow, or it needed a writer interested in his Black characters as more than just signposts towards humanizing monsters.

Paul Schrader – still powering at the age of 77 – is at his uncompromising best here, taking his story onto intense and unexpected turf, while never losing sight of the essential optimism (slightly rare for the director) that lies at its core.

Neither the filmmaker nor the lead actor is afraid to take on difficult or contentious subjects, and the governing garden motif has promise, but it turns out to be stilted and awkward drama

This is very familiar territory for Schrader who traverses it proficiently though without enough panache to really make it anything more than a passing crime drama. It’s a bit of a letdown after The Card Counter.