FLESH AND BONE (1993)

FLESH AND BONE (R) As Arlis Sweeney, a loner who drives around West Texas stocking soda machines and condom dispensers, Dennis Quaid wears a pouty, constipated expression, as though he'd just gotten a whuppin' and were trying not to cry. Why is Arlis so miserable? Thirty years ago, he watched his sociopath daddy (James Caan) slaughter an innocent family. Flesh and Bone is a lugubrious piece of American Gothic hokum, the sort of movie that proclaims its lofty intentions in every nuance-in the arid, elliptical dialogue (imagine Ingmar Bergman characters in Stetsons) and in the art-conscious images of the Texas flatlands, so stunning yet so, you know, metaphorical. D+ ( 196, Nov. 12) -OG