Wim Wenders’ western-motif laden Don’t Come Knocking takes the ‘lone cowboy hero’ from the mythic classic westerns to the real world.  While said hero, usually a steely-eyed, silent-type stranger, rides into town either to paint the town red or face a showdown usually resulting in victory over the bad guys, Knocking’s protagonist gets no such pleasure. Instead, he becomes the center of a domestic drama as a point-out to the unsavory side of the once-coveted icon of heroism, chivalry and vigilante justice.

In reverse of traditional westerns, where the hero rides into town, Knocking begins with the protagonist riding out of one – his movie location set.  Here lies a man whose personal (and public) identity has long been synonymous with his screen counterpart. Played by Sam Shepard, who also penned the screenplay, Howard Spence is a faded actor of westerns (which ironically is a faded genre).  He is a loner, never settles down, lives by his own set of codes, and indulges in booze, sex and drugs with wanton abandonment, until he is all washed up. Howard begins a journey of self-discovery, literally and figuratively, upon finding out from his Nevada-resided mother (Eva Marie Saint) about a son he never knew from one of his apparent one-night flings in Butte, Montana.  The journey is not to affect change from his wicked ways, but a curiosity of what might have been…had he stuck around. 

Elsewhere, a young woman named Sky (Sarah Polley) receives an urn containing her deceased mother.  As an in-joke, possibly by Wenders, she is introduced in all-blue attire with matching blue-colored urn.  She too goes on a journey.  To find the father she never knew, except in the movies. Back at the movie set, a mysterious suit going by the name Sutter (Tim Roth) is engaged by the movie producers to find Howard and bring him back to fulfill his contractual obligations.  Although Sky and Sutter represent the western genre archetypes, damsel and marshal/bounty hunter respectively, their roles are minimized almost to the point of aimless drifting.  They are the only characters to pass through the film’s entire drama unscathed.

Before the volatile showdown between father and son in Butte, Earl (Gabriel Mann) is introduced in an earlier sequence as the singer of one of the music tracks.  The paternal link is not established until later, but enough information is revealed of his profession and his groupie girlfriend Amber (Fairuza Balk).  Although there are some attempts at ambiguity – Earl denies parentage, and questionable lack of resemblance between him and Howard – it is not difficult to buy the paternal link between Howard and Earl.  Earl takes after his father’s intolerance towards being stared at, and his neediness for a maternal figure during an emotional crisis – Earl for his mom Doreen (Jessica Lange), and Howard for his mother first and then for Doreen.

Wenders demonstrates his mastery of visual language in a few stand-out sequences.  An interior sweep of Howard’s trailer surveys the depth of his boozing.  Framing affixed to the open pages of Howard’s mother’s scrapbook as he turns them to look at his career and more prominent behaviors in retrospect.  Earl first appears in tight framing, his name and location withheld, possibly as Howard’s antagonist with his black-colored attire adding to the effect.  Wenders also employs circular tracking shots to position the character as the center of the drama. However, this only works the first time…on Howard.  It is pointless when used on Sutter as he is neither the center of the drama nor ever develops as a character.  In the scene of Howard and Sky sitting on the couch outside Earl’s home, it is distracting. The dialogue requires the pacing to slow down, but the circular tracking effect suggests not only for the pacing to speed up but also that the drama occurs externally when it is actually occurring internally – Sky’s reflection of how Earl feels towards them, and Howard’s silent acknowledgement that Sky is his daughter.

Knocking would have been a perfect film had, among other things, Sky and Sutter been more engaging characters.  Despite the substantial amount of screen time, it is a fair expectation.  Sky is passively starry-eyed and, unlike Earl, provides no dramatic tensions (the staredowns at her dad don’t count) with her father.  Her only useful moment, besides providing Howard his son’s address, is delivering the melodramatic though underwhelming speech in typical Hollywood style (with all the other characters listening politely) that expresses to Howard what he feels but would not say.  Sutter is a fish out of water, and it is not just because of his formal attire.  Who he is, what drives him or his significance in the dramatic developments of the story is not touched upon. Except for three very brief shots and the cuffing of Howard thereafter, he is separated from the principal actors.  He does show some semblance of obsessive compulsive disorder, in the way he handles a cookie baked by Howard’s mother and his insistence not to have the radio turned on while driving.

Shepard gives many layers to an otherwise one-dimensional, washed-up screen cowboy.  Howard’s baggage assortment of professional, behavioral and emotional –guilt, yearning (of what was before) and inclination to take flight when situations prove difficult – in all its facets is clearly shown on his face and body language. Lange’s wonderfully restrained performance rears full-force when she explodes in impeccable timing towards Howard’s proposition to settle down with her (which she knows very well will result in him being absentee again).  Despite playing essentially the same character in Broken Flowers, her performance in Knocking is not only solid but also not eccentric at all.  Mann’s seething with anger galvanizes his character. On the flipside, Saint is amiably motherly (ala mama’s boy).  All the cast is stellar save for Roth and Polley.  They are difficult to figure, whether it is their acting or their roles that disconnect them from the rest.  Polley is not as affecting as her poignant lead in My Life Without Me.  Roth would have been better as a nasty villain.