The good father (Amore e rabbia) – Mike Newell

un film amaro e triste, dove due padri, gli straordinari Anthony Hopkins e Jim Broadbent, sono separati e con un figlio ciascuno e hanno problemi con la ex moglie (e madre dei bambini).

Anthony Hopkins è uno che ha i soldi e soffre la mancanza del figlio, ma sopratutto, forse, che non può vincere. Jim Broadbent si fa intrappolare in una causa contro la moglie (consigliato da Anthony Hopkins, che gli presta i soldi per l’avvocato).

dice Roger Ebert che questo è un film sulla scarsità di amore nel mondo.

bravi tutti, ma se anche ci fossero solo Anthony Hopkins e Jim Broadbent che chiacchierano al pub con una birra, i soldi del biglietto, o, meglio, del dvd, sarebbero ben spesi per questo piccolo grande film, sicuro - Ismaele

In The Good Father, Anthony Hopkins stars as Bill Hooper - a bitter, motorcycle-riding single father who seemingly holds nothing but contempt for his ex-wife. Bill has been separated from Emmy (Harriet Walter) for quite some time, and is relegated to occasional visits with their young son. After meeting Roger (Jim Broadbent), a schoolteacher who's in the process of splitting from his wife, Bill decides to direct all of his anger and resentment into securing Roger sole custody of his son (his soon-to-be-ex has declared herself a lesbian and is planning to move the boy to Australia). Based on the novel by Peter Prince, The Good Father casts Hopkins as a surprisingly unlikable figure - Bill mistreats most everyone around him, including his little boy - and yet, thanks primarily to Hopkins' charismatic, engaging performance, the character eventually becomes someone that we're rooting for. It certainly doesn't help that many of the supporting characters have been painted with extremely broad strokes (with a few exceptions, including Broadbent's Roger), something that's particularly true of a man-hating lawyer that actually wears a t-shirt that reads, "all men are rapists."…

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…"The Good Father" is filled with great supporting performances to circle around Hopkins' energy. There is Jim Broadbent as the easygoing man who is pushed into the courts by Hooper. Simon Callow (the romantic vicar in "A Room with a View") is the affected, cruel, priggish lawyer. Harriet Walter is Hopkins' wife, a woman who still wonders why they couldn't somehow have found a solution to their problems. And in a subtle and difficult performance, Joanne Whalley is the liberated young woman who briefly becomes Hopkins' mistress and is the catalyst for his breakthrough to more self-awareness.

There have been a lot of movies about the changing lives and roles of women in the last 20 years. "The Good Father" is a very rare film, a film that asks hard and fundamental questions about the role of men: such as, is it ever too late for a man to learn that he can never love himself until he first learns to love somebody else? The film was directed byMike Newell, whose previous film, "Dance With A Stranger," asked a similar question about women. Neither film is really about men's lib or women's lib, or even sexual politics, for that matter.

They are about the shortage of love in the world.

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