Being Flynn (2012)

This movie centers around two characters.  Jonathan Flynn (Robert De Niro) is a complicated and deeply unlikable character.  He is well into the several year spiral that occurs when people become homeless.  He drives a cab, which is his, but he self-describes himself as one of the three greatest writers of all time (the other two being J.D. Salinger and Mark Twain).  Nothing is a conversation with this man--it is his way or the highway.  Even if you aren't short sighted enough to argue with him, it doesn't matter, he argues anyway.  His speech is peppered with profanity, but in a lot of ways that is the least offensive part of what he has to say.  He brings up forbidden topics, he is a misogynist, he is openly and unapologetically racist.  In summary, he is unbearable.  Brilliantly so, in De Niro's deft hand, but really, every time he opens his mouth you want to walk out.

The other character is his son Nick, who is an aspiring but unsuccessful writer and poet.  He is traumatized by the suicide of his mother when he was 22 years old.  She worked more than one job his entire life in order to raise him and he is scarred by the thought that she read an unfinished story of his that did not cast the most flattering of light upon her, and that is why she killed herself.  The only helpful thing that his father does is to disabuse him of the notion that his mother killed herself because of him--doesn't happen that way, my boy.

The sad part is that, minus the obnoxious foul mouthed language, it starts off being a story of like father like son.  Nick is underemployed and drinking and drugging enough to have his girlfriend leave him as a result of it.  Finally, ever so slightly, the story takes a turn for the better.  De Niro gives a pitch perfect performance about what is so hard to do when trying to lend a hand to someone tough who is spiraling downward.  Considering the prevalence of the condition throughout the United States, particularly amongst veterans, it is a movie that while painful, is well worth watching and thinking about.