Review: Unfortunately, ‘The Son,’ starring Hugh Jackman, does not take after ‘The Father’ – the movie that made him an international star. ‘The Son’ does not have its own plot or even a story. It is rather like a series of events with the same protagonist doing the same thing over and over again.
The story is rather predictable, and the movie itself is not very interesting. Jackman’s character, Daniel Jackson, is a convicted murderer who is now on death row. Daniel gets out of prison and is sent to a federal prison called Alcatraz. He gets caught and sentenced to death. He has been there for four years.
Daniel’s sentence is being carried out by the prison’s warden, Fred Ramer.
‘The Son’ is a remake of the 1974 film of the same name. The movie’s hero and its villain have also been remade – with just minor differences. The new villain is Bill Paxton, the same as the 1974 villain, James Cagney. He is a former cop who was captured and tortured to reveal information about his former partner, a police captain. After the torture, Paxton became a cold blooded killer. Cagney’s character in the 1974 film, James Coburn, was a very cold hearted man. I was expecting something better.
The good guy in ‘The Son’ is Detective David Dennison (James Badge Dale). He got involved with a new girlfriend and is now trying to find out if she was involved with the murder of a man who was beaten up at a bar. At first, he thinks she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he and Ramer discover it was part of a bigger conspiracy.
Ramer’s wife, Sally (Anjelica Huston) is a very sadistic widow who gets upset when her husband doesn’t get a promotion. She decides to have him killed. She is also very jealous that Ramer is dating his wife. She has the prison guards tie up her daughter, Lisa (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), in the basement. She then hangs her. Ramer gets back the body bag, but doesn’t really care either way. Then he gets a call from Detective Dennison. After some confusion as to who it is, they are introduced and Dennison tells Ramer that his wife had been murdered. He tells him that Lisa was found, and he is