The Paperboy

Directed by Lee Daniels

(R)

**

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This trashy mystery-thriller has a “powerful, inexplicable pull,” said Michael O’Sullivan in The Washington Post. A “barn-burning performance” by Nicole Kidman might be its chief pleasure. As a lusty bimbo who’s infatuated with a convicted Florida murderer, she has lured two newspaper reporters, as well as a younger hanger-on (the titular “paperboy”), into her bid to clear her sleazy fiancé. But as capable as the actors are, this “raunchy, heat-dazed” period movie turns out to be almost “demented” in its lack of focus, said Alison Willmore in Movieline.com. A film that asks Kidman to masturbate in one scene and urinate on Zac Efron in another could be called unpredictable, but its luridness doesn’t become a useful leit-motif. It merely “leaves you wanting to scrub yourself clean in the shower.” That’s a shame, since all of the performances are at first interesting in different ways, said Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle. Matthew McConaughey and John Cusack are particularly worth watching—until the overcomplicated story kicks in. By about the midpoint, “virtually every incentive to keep watching has evaporated.”