Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Produced, written and directed by Richard Dutcher
• Starring
  • Richard Dutcher
  • Matthew A. Brown
  • Wilford Brimley
  • Carrie Morgan

Back in 2000, Richard Dutcher wrote, directed, and co-starred in a movie called God’s Army, an independent film about the life of Mormon missionaries. I didn’t review it here, as it’s outside the normal scope of my review arena, but it was an incredible movie: It presented a very honest look at how missionaries think and feel, and the struggles and triumphs of the term they spend proselyting.

By also being the first theatrical movie designed to tell stories about Mormons for Mormons — not as a missionary tool or apologetic work, but simply a story by and for a faith-based subculture — it also single-handedly created a new cinematic subculture: Mormon movies. People are discovering that regional theatrical distibution is a viable business decision (with Mormons being a sizeable population group in the Intermountain West), and Dutcher exposed a niche market.

“And the next person that calls me ‘The Walrus’ gets to to taste my size 12EE’s!”

As with any such, everyone wants to be “first to be second,” and in the last two years some other specifically Mormon movies have come out. The Other Side of Heaven just got limited national release last month, the dramatized true story of a young missionary in the ’50s spending three years on a Tongan island. (Just to show you that religious bias doesn’t overwhelm my judgement, I thought that while The Other Side of Heaven had many moving faith-specific scenes, it was far too episodic, without any real narrative thrust. And Anne Hathaway as Elder Groberg’s “girl back home” was completely wasted.) There’s even a comedy currently in local theaters, called Singles Ward, about the all-singles congregations you find in larger urban areas and around universities.

Having basically jump-started the genre, then, Dutcher had to follow it up. While God’s Army and The Other Side of Heaven were both generally sunny stories (and dealt with missionary experiences, which are as close to universal experiences as you’re going to find among Mormons), Brigham City is a much darker story, a Mormon murder mystery. And it may well be one of the best movies made in the last five years.

In the fictional small Utah town of Brigham (not to be confused with the real Brigham City), Wes Clayton (Dutcher) is a man with many hats. He’s the Kirtland County sheriff and fully half of the police force, along with his only deputy, Terry (Matthew A. Brown, star of God’s Army). He’s also the bishop of one of Brigham’s seventeen LDS congregations, in charge of the spiritual wellbeing of a couple hundred members. He’s a widower, having lost his wife and child in a car crash that put him in a coma for eight days and left him limping on a leg brace. In many ways, though only 35 (one character calls him “the youngest old man I’ve eveer known”), Wes has transplanted his paternal instincts onto the people for whom he is doubly responsible. He worries about the change that growth is bringing to a peaceful town where no one locks their doors.

“I tell you, Terry, no one’ll take you seriously as a deputy until you grow a law enforcement moustache.”

And all his worries come to the forefront when Wes and Terry find a bloodspattered convertible by an abandoned homstead — and the brutally-murdered woman inside.

With the out-of-state plates on the car, Wes is only too happy to hand the whole matter over to FBI Agents Cole and Garcia (Tavya Patch and Jeff Johnson), disclaiming the whole thing as an “outside matter” that noly ended up in his county thanks to a randomly-chosen highway off-ramp. He tries to keep a lid on the matter and asks the FBI to conduct their investigation discreetly as the town goes about its annual birthday celebrations.

And it all comes crashing down when the body of Miss Brigham (Jacque Gray) is discovered under the park gazebo on Sunday morning, forcing him to switch hats from bishop to sheriff in the middle of meetings. “Congratulations, Sheriff,” says Agent Cole. “You’ve got a serial killer in town.”

Because this is a murder mystery, suspects are trotted out — but because there are no real clues, the suspects are just about everybody. We’re given some faces to attach suspicions to, like Ed (John Enos), the tow-truck driver who’s about to get baptized, or Steve (Richard Clifford, an old friend from my frechman year who went on to marry my friend Don’s sister), the slightly shifty photographer. But there’s an entire town here. And if the killer is one of them, what will that do to the trust of a multi-generational community?

Spot the spooks. OK, time’s up!

And this really wasn’t meant to be a classic whodunit, with a discrete pool of clearly delineated suspects and conflicting evidence pointing at each. It’s a study of a community faced with a life-changing event. Themes of the paradox of innocence and wisdom abound, thanks largely to the lesson being taught in a Sunday School class that Agent Cole sits in to familiarize herself with the local culture. I dreaded the inevitable “Adam and Eve” allusion, but even when it came it was quiet and appropriate, coming from the mouth of old Stu (Wilford Brimley), the retired former sheriff who’s too ornery to lie down and retire: “Nothing attracts a serpent like Paradise.”

One scene that has stuck in the craw of many viewers has Wes gathering the men of the town and sending them door-to-door, two by two, to physically search every house for a missing girl. In a town where the separation of church and state is more a thought experiment than a reality, many are uncomfortable with and angry at both the violation of civil liberties and the use of “missionary experience” in the hands of law enforcement. But this scene makes sense in the context of the paternal and pastoral responsibility Wes feels for his congregation and community — the goal being not evidence or even apprehension, but simply the safe rescue of the missing girl.

Along the way, religion plays a role, but not in an overt or preachy manner, any more than Witness was a proselyting tool for the Amish. This is largely a community of trust and faith, held together by common bonds of belief and true communitarianism; the basis of their faith is at times explored through the designated outsider-figure of Agent Cole, but in large part the religiosity of the theme is confined to non-denominational questions of innocence, redemption, and honestly trying to apply the precepts of one’s faith in a situation beyond one’s imagination.

Ladies and gentlemen, Richard Clifford as the faintly creepy guy!

Is this a perfect movie? No. Neither Dutcher nor Brown is quite as convincing in their roles as they were in God’s Army, probably owing to the fact that those roles are further out of their own experience. These’s some small indication of tension between Wes’ twin roles, but I think that a stronger juxtaposition between the two couldn’t have hurt. And in a town where non-Mormons are the minority, I can only imagine that community retrenchment and solidarity would have had much more the effect of splitting the town down lines of faith than what’s apparent here.

But these are really quibbles. Because this is a movie of refreshing honesty — of people of good conscience trying imperfectly to solve an unimaginable crime, and to keep it from hurting further. Though the pacing is relaxed and the violence is shown mutedly, there’s no shying away from the gutwrenching effects of it, or the trauma inflicted on those who have to deal with it. and Dutcher the filmmaker isn’t afraid to show that, even in his own devoted religion, there are sometimes no easy answers; nor is he afraid to show Dutcher the actor portraying a flawed and struggling man who feels his inadequacy in the face of his own commitment and responsibilities.

The widowered sheriff’s not trying to get into the cute FBI agent’s pants. Whoa. MUST be a Mormon.

What pushed this one completely onto my “Wholeheartedly Recommended” list is the final scene, one that speaks of redemption and forgiveness and community without a word being spoken. It is a uniquely Mormon scene, with the background necessary for comprehension given earlier in the movie, but I doubt that the true emotional power of it can be completely experienced by anyone outside of the faith. And that’s not a bad thing; it’s a good thing. Dutcher has deliberately created a beautiful and unsettling movie designed to be understood most fully by a certain people, his people, not because of any impulse to be exclusive and exclusionary, but because trying to tell the story in terms which are equally understood by all audiences would mean that its power would be diminished for those audiences which could experience it best. I’ll freely admit that I cried like a baby during those last few minutes; I would not have had Dutcher sacrifice that powerful storytelling, not for anything.

Dutcher’s next project is that dream of all Mormon filmmakers, a biographical film about Joseph Smith. It’s an overwhelming undertaking, but if anyone can craft an honest vision of this founding figure of LDS faith without falling into hagiography or apologetics, if anyone can show the conflicts of the human spirit through the unique lens of Mormon faith, it’s Richard Dutcher.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 6
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Touched By an Angel: 14 (it’s filmed in Utah, after all)