‘The Revisionist’ Review: Dustin Hoffman and Alison Brie Lead Drama

Movies about writers face a rare challenge: After all, how cinematic is it to show someone tormented by a blank page or an unresponsive computer? The Oscar-winning Capote had the dramatic advantage of a protagonist investigating a horrific mass murder. But that was an exception.

Defying those difficulties, Alex Vlack’s The Revisionist, a Tribeca world premiere, gives us not one but four main characters who are published or aspiring writers. Suffice it to say that the spectacle, while not exactly comparable to watching paint dry, is not always scintillating.

It definitely helps to have four such gifted actors engaged in the endeavor. We first meet old friends John, played by André Holland, and Jacob, portrayed by Tom Sturridge, when they accidentally run into each other after a long separation. Jacob is married to Elise, played by Alison Brie, who is struggling with her latest novel. Jacob’s father David, played by Dustin Hoffman, is a once-storied author who has not written anything in decades.

Both Jacob and John think they might be able to eke out David’s life story for a tell-all bestseller. Elise, meanwhile, is trying to fend off her agent who keeps pressing her about a long overdue deadline.

As we learn more about the four characters, drama escalates. Yet the drama is mainly verbal, and while there are revelations about the family history, even a 90-minute running time seems padded. We can be grateful that the actors are appealing and skillful. Holland, who had important roles in Selma and Moonlight, always captivates. But while Brie is a gifted performer, she can’t really overcome the bad behavior that the script forces her to enact as perhaps the least sympathetic of the four leads. The British Sturridge plays with an American accent until the final scenes when he reverts to a British accent for no discernible reason.

Fortunately, Hoffman, who between this and Tuner has been enjoying something of a late-career resurgence, sweeps in to save the day. He interacts gracefully with the other three performers, and he manages to etch a memorably complex character. At the start, David seems abrasive and unloving toward his own son and altogether too inviting toward John, who is eager to take over the biographical project that Jacob was angling for. But as we learn more of the complex history of Jacob and his parents, our sympathy coalesces around David, even though the actor never begs for it.

So who’s going to publish a book at the end of this story of writers with swollen egos? The answer may or may not surprise you, but whether you will care is another issue. The picture is well crafted as well as skillfully cast, but it never rises from literary conceit to genuinely compelling drama. Only when Hoffman is holding center stage do you feel you are watching a real movie, rather than a ponderous creative exercise.