Bacon's finest performance as an awful character

The Woodsman

Director: Nicole Kassell

Cast: Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Benjamin Bratt, Mos Def

Cert: 18

That most under-rated of actors, Bacon, has never been afraid to take on roles outside of the box, roles with gritty and controversial themes.

Here, he tackles that most awful of characters, the paedophile; and manages, against the odds, to imbue him with a strong degree of sympathy. No mean feat, given the subject matter.

Bacon plays a man fresh out of jail after a 12-year conviction for abusing young girls. He returns to his hometown and becomes a woodcutter in an effort to turn around his troubled life.

He is, clearly, a man with a disgraceful past and a lot of unsavoury baggage, but he is determined to find redemption; even to find love and perhaps raise a family of his own.

Bacon brings to his character a depth and a strange well of tortured humanity and he is supported by his real-life wife, the equally under-rated Sedgwick, as the co-worker who might be able to save him. From Bratt there is, in addition, a finely-judged performance as a simple-minded friend, and Kassell manages the near-impossible of getting us on the side of such an initially vile character.

But the film belongs to Bacon, and it is his finest ever performance.

Star Rating: 4/5