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A taut thriller that role reverses to good effect. The protagonist
Tilda Swinton is a mother who covers up for the crime of her son. The "hooker with a heart of gold" is no hooker, but a blackmailer Goran Visnjic who warms to Swinton in her desperation to come up with cash. Swinton is mesmerizing as an isolated, semi-repressed mother figure, desperately dealing not only with the emergence of her teenage son's lover as a corpse in their backyard, but the fact that her son is dealing with his homosexuality (no mean feat in a military family), her husband is at sea (he serves on a United States carrier), her father-in-law (who lives with her) is ill, and she has two other children to whom she tends. Visjnic is forced by the screenwriters to silently evoke his change of heart in very little time, but he manages, even in quietude (I was reminded of Kevin Spacey's all-in-the-eyes grasp for an honest change in L.A. Confidential). The Deep End succeeds most with Swinton as she juggles the pressures of most thrillers (violence, threats, time-pressure) with the everyday factor of child-rearing. Her exasperated speech to Visjnic as he informs her that she is not trying hard enough to get the money, is the heart of the film. One negative is Visnjic's partner, an inexplicably bad, bad, bad guy whose present suggests more Tarantino than really works for this picture. Grade: B+
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