In Like Father, Like Son, Dermot Mulroney stars as Gabe, a janitor who, when we first encounter him, brutally murders a young bully in full view of his son Eli (Dylan Flashner). He is subsequently imprisoned, awaiting death via lethal injection. So, needless to say, writer-director Barry Jay’s film isn’t a heartwarming tale about modern parenting. Instead, it presents us with a cryptic thriller that reflects upon the deeply disturbing statistic that illustrates how violence breeds violence, with its roots planted in abuse in all of its many forms.
The story continues with Eli in the turmoil of his 20s. Struggling to come to grips with the deep-seated hatred of his father, alongside his own violent tendencies, which seem to be rapidly up-scaling towards homicide. Too much love or not enough, lumped in with expectation and rejection, all these placed upon the shoulders of the innocent and impressionable, help foster a yearning for the dark path. Eli stumbles to and fro as he grapples with the realities of his father’s life in Gabe’s last days before his sentence is carried out.
“Eli wages a constant war with his inner demons until he begins falling down like Michael Douglas before him.”
But unbeknownst to our leading man, his journey toward his father’s fate was sealed long ago. Eli wages a constant war with his inner demons until he begins falling down like Michael Douglas before him. Giving in to his rage at each juncture, he cannot escape the ghost of the old man in his machine. Once his switch gets flipped, merciless beatings arise. But these lapses finally conclude with murder as Eli takes down a man trying to have his way with Hayley (Ariel Winter). Bizarrely, Hayley praises Eli’s bravery, and since there are no witnesses to the crime, she encourages him to move on. They commence their relationship, with his girl having no clue as to the true nature of the psychopath she is unwittingly nurturing and enabling.
The climax of Like Father, Like Son highlights shows the inescapable reality. It is a startling wake-up call that if all you show a child is rage then it quickly becomes a case of monkey see, monkey do. The themes work well enough, but the film as a whole is very on the nose. There’s no nuance here, and as hinted earlier, this is not an original story.
Still, the cast do what they can. Plus, the sheer intensity of what happens and the cyclical nature of violence on display is hard to ignore. But Like Father, Like Son never truly absorbs us in its characters, leaving a lot of food for thought, but little to say on any of it.
"…illustrates how violence breeds violence..."
