The Good Heart

Jacques, the bad-tempered owner of a small New York bar, suffers a run of heart attacks. He takes in Lucas, a homeless young man he meets in hospital, and decides to leave him the bar. He has one condition: Lucas must learn his rules, which means loving nobody. Dagur Kari wrote and directed. Brian Cox plays Jacques, Paul Dano plays Lucas. It is Kari's first film in English. The style continues his Icelandic work: cold humour, fixed framing, and telling through behaviour rather than speech. The bar is the film's only world. The regulars do not change, the outside is barely shown, and the place works as a shelter. Inheritance sits at the centre, but what is handed over is not a business, it is a method of survival, and the method does not work. Cox makes the character watchable without making him likeable. The ending is harsh and unexpected. Who it is for: viewers who like small-scale, character-driven films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a warm story of friendship; the film never goes that way.