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| Traveller |
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  (6/10)
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Runtime: 101 |
| Public Rating: 10.00 (1 votes) |
Director: Jack Green |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Suspense |
Year: 1997 |
| Writer(s): Jim McGlynn |
| Reviewed by: Goatdog |
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The Travellers are a group of Irish gypsies, I guess, who make their living by conning regular people out of their money and property. We first meet Bokky (Bill Paxton) when he pulls up in front of a house with a tank full of driveway sealant. He gets the owners of the house to pay him $200 to seal their driveway. As he leaves, it starts to rain, and the "sealant" which turns out to be crude oil runs in rivulets down the driveway.
These travellers are clannish, which we discover when Bokky goes home for the World Series, which is one of two times of the year when all the families are home. The other is Easter. World Series time is a time for burials, and one of the deceased is the father of Pat (Mark Wahlburg). Pat's dad left the group for an outsider woman, and he was shunned for it. Pat wants in, but Boss Costello (Luke Askew) doesn't want anything to do with him. Bokky agrees to take Pat under his wing, teach him the ropes, and Costello has to agree. Unfortunately, Pat starts making eyes at Kate (Nikki Deloach), Costello's daughter, which is sure to lead to trouble.
Most of the movie has a kind of good-natured fun feel about it. Even when Bokky and Pat are almost shot by two farmers who refuse to fall for the "sealant" routine, you never get the feeling that there is any danger involved, as if they would just shake hands and say "no hard feelings" if they were caught. Bokky is a good guy; he feels bad when his cons result in Jean (Juliana Marguilis), a bartender, losing her job. He goes to her house to apologize, and quickly falls in love with her and her daughter, who suffers from debilitating ear infections. Pat doesn't like this development, knowing full well that Bokky will be shunned if he leaves the family for Jean. Bokky doesn't care, because he is in love.
The film takes an unnecessarily dark turn with the arrival of Double D (James Gammon), a fellow con artist. He has an elaborate plan to cheat some real gypsies, despite Bokky's protests that such a plan could get them killed. Pat wants to go along for the ride, and Bokky is forced to play along when he discovers that Jean's daughter's ear infections will result in deafness unless she receives a $40,000 operation.
At this point, the film becomes standard thriller fare. You already know how it ends, so I won't bother, except to say that I was disappointed that it couldn't follow its genuinely good and original first half with a more interesting coda. The director, who was cinematographer on several of Clint Eastwood's movies, proves himself to be a good director, and I look forward to his efforts with a better script.
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