Swiss Army Man (2016)

I understand Daniel Radcliffe trying to distance himself as much as possible from the Harry Potter series.  Unlike Robert Pattinson he never seemed embarrassed by the role that made him famous, but it was one he began playing as a kid.  By the time the movies ended he was much older than the character he was playing on screen and eager to take on more challenging roles.

That he has done.  Horns was a strange bit of indie horror and fantasy and, most recently, he has played "Weird Al" Yankovic in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.  Still, the strangest role he has played to date is that of a corpse named Manny in Swiss Army Man, the feature film debut from the guys that would bring us Everything Everywhere All at Once.  

Hank Thompson (Paul Dano) is a shipwreck survivor reaching his end on a small desert island somewhere in the Pacific.  As he is about to kill himself he sees another person wash up on shore.  He delays his suicide long enough to see who it is but finds that it is a corpse of a drowned man.  After heading back to finish the job he soon realizes that the corpse has a strange amount of flatulence, enough that it propels itself.  Tying himself to it, Hank manages to use it to escape the island.

He soon finds himself washed up on what appears to be a larger island.  He soon explores, hoping to find civilization, but just finds the trash that someone else left behind.  However, Manny begins to exhibit other powers, from being able to supply water to launching projectiles from his mouth.  He also begins to be able to speak to Hank.  With no memories of his life before dying he needs to be retaught everything about the world.  Meanwhile, both Hank and Manny become fixated on a girl named Sarah (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) that is on the wallpaper of Manny's phone.  The two bond, with Manny becoming more and more alive as their friendship develops.

Despite this being a weird concept it isn't as wild and crazy as I thought it would be.  Instead, it's more a typical bonding film, albeit with some uncomfortable necrophiliac undertones as well as some hints that Hank may not be the gentle man who fled from society that he claims to be.  I expected the last scene of this movie to be Hank hanging from where he was going to off himself and the whole thing to be his dying fantasy, but Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert have a way of surprising.  They manage to come up with a touching, if somewhat confusing, finale to this. 

The majority of the movie is Dano and Radcliffe so it is good that they work well together.  The latter doesn't have any dialog until about 20 minutes or so into the movie, and mostly just fulfills his corpse duties.  Dano plays Hank as a weirdo from the outset, first with the idea that he has become that way due to isolation and later when it becomes clear that he may have some severe mental problems.  

Much of the same combination of crude and clever comedy pervades this as it did Everything Everywhere All at Once, but it seems more rudimentary in Swiss Army Man.  Still, I admire the Daniels for being able to pull off such a film and not have it turn into an incomprehensible mess, which is what the trailers made it look like. 

Swiss Army Man (2016)

Time: 97 minutes

Starring: Paul Dano, Daniel Radcliffe

Directors: Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan