Themes: Haunted By the Past, Fathers and Sons, Fathers and Daughters
Main Cast: Sam Shepard, Jessica Lange, Tim Roth, Gabriel Mann, Sarah Polley
Release Year: 2005
Country: DE/US/FR/UK
Run Time: 125 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Director Wim Wenders and writer Sam Shepard, who collaborated on the award-winning film Paris, Texas, once again join forces for this dark drama of a man trying to turn over a new leaf late in life. Howard Spence (Sam Shepard) is a veteran actor who has been a popular Western star since the mid-'70s. Spence's onscreen image as a strong, principled lawman is a severe contrast to his life off the set, which has been dominated by drinking, drugs, and promiscuous womanizing. However, Spence has begun to find his hedonistic life a shallow existence, and one day, in the midst of filming his latest movie, he simply hops on his horse and rides away, eventually making his way to the small Nevada town where his mother lives. Mother (Eva Marie Saint) has little interest in seeing her wayward son after so many years, but she does share a recently discovered bit of information with him -- one of Spence's former girlfriends stopped by with word that she had given birth to his son years before. Spence borrows his father's old car and drives to Butte, MT, where he finds Doreen (Jessica Lange), the woman who was his lover years ago. Doreen runs a tavern where her son, Earl (Gabriel Mann), plays for the locals with his rock band; Spence is in fact Earl's father, but the young man has no interest in meeting his biological father, and shuts out Spence as the actor tries to get to know him. As Spence struggles to find some sort of familial connection in Butte, he makes friends with a young woman named Sky (Sarah Polley), only to discover she was also fathered by him during his rowdy younger days. Don't Come Knocking's distinguished supporting cast includes Tim Roth, George Kennedy, Fairuza Balk, Julia Sweeney, and Tim Matheson. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Shepard stars as Howard Spence, an aging, hard-living Western movie star, who, disgusted with his life, flees by horse from the set of his latest western filming in the desert outside Moab, Utah. He hits the road looking for refuge in his past, traveling to his hometown of Elko, Nevada and, eventually, to Butte, Montana, looking for a woman (Jessica Lange) he left behind twenty years before when he was filming a movie there. Spence is doggedly pursued by Mr. Sutter (Tim Roth), a humorless representative of the company insuring Spence's latest film, whose mission is to return Spence to the set to finish filming the movie. Also converging on Butte is a young woman named Sky (Sarah Polley), returning her late mother's ashes to her hometown and conducting a search of her own.
Actors and cameos
The film features cameo appearances by George Kennedy as a beleaguered movie director, and Tim Matheson and Julia Sweeney as movie producers. Also appearing briefly is Tom Farrell (from Wenders 1980 Lightning Over Water and the Screaming Man from Paris, Texas) as a high-school acquaintance who recognizes Howard along the way. The film also marks the first collaboration in 18 years (since 1988's Far North) between Shepard and his longtime partner Jessica Lange, as the two had an agreement never to work at the same time, in order not to neglect their children.
