The Son of No One | Film review

Having already tinkered with Mean Streets and Raging Bull to create Channing Tatum vehicles in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and Fighting, respectively, writer-director Dito Montiel moves from Martin Scorsese’s De Niro period to his DiCaprio period with The Son of No One. His latest, following Tatum as he tries to keep his criminal background secret, is a Matt Damon counterpart short of being The Departed.

After a series of anonymous letters sets off a reporter’s exploration into deaths that took place in 1986, NYPD Officer Jonathan White (Tatum) must simultaneously halt the investigation, dodge the mysterious threats on his life and figure out who’s sending the letters in an attempt to reopen the case. Yet White’s past is not particularly sensational—the two deaths he caused as a teen were clear accidents and could be considered self-defense—which makes the supposed news value of its possible exposure all the more puzzling.

Montiel turns to a series of surprise reveals to cover up his many plot holes and implausibilities. That the filmmaker struggles with detail, though, shouldn’t come as a shock given that he twice establishes the setting as a New York City reeling from the events of September 11, 2002.

Tatum, mostly just by playing his character as an emotionless husk, fares best in a schizophrenic cast that includes the dependably immoderate Ray Liotta and Al Pacino and the jarringly miscast Katie Holmes, Juliette Binoche and Tracy Morgan (making a feeble bid for the O in his EGOT).