The movie begins with a flashback to Larry's early bootlegging days in the Kentucky hills, then jumps around through his life until settling on the landmark Supreme Court case brought against "Hustler" by Moral Majority wingnut Jerry Falwell. Interweaved with the legal battle is the relationship between Larry and his fourth wife, Althea. The film also covers the assassination attempt that crippled Flynt for life and his subsequent spiral into a world of booze and painkillers. Sure, his first three wives and several children never get even a mention, but this a message-based motion picture about the dangers of censorship, not a full-on, meticulously researched biographical portrait. This is, first and foremost, a piece of entertainment.
Director Milos Forman, known for such Oscar-winning productions as "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," and "Amadeus," initially seemed like an odd choice to tackle the story of Larry Flynt's battles for the First Amendment against the anti-porn, anti-freedom bluenoses. But at second glance, we see an artist who has overcome great hardships in his home country of Czechoslovakia, escaping the Russian tanks at the end of "Prague Spring" in 1968. This turned out to be the perfect choice for this American story. The alternative, it seems, would've been Executive Producer Oliver Stone at the helm. I shudder at the potential. Are we ready for "Natural Born Pornographers"?
The film we do get is a very moving slice of lowlife. Woody Harrelson, plying his trademark cunning redneck shtick, at last seems to have found a character he can inhabit other than minor variations on his "Cheers" dumb-guy routines. His portrayal of Flynt is uncannily accurate. The performance is unlikable but not unsympathetic, which is a peculiar feat of acting. For the first time in his film career, Harrelson holds his own.
The other two linchpin portrayals are Edward Norton as Andrew Isaacmann, the composite character based on several of Flynt's lawyers; and grunge goddess and Gen X royalty Courtney Love as Althea Flynt, Larry's beloved stripper/junkie wife. Now, I know you're probably thinking that Courtney Love playing an abrasive exhibitionist hooked on heroin might be something of a stretch, but she really pulls it off well. There are individual scenes in which the line between reality and movieland blur together to create an oddly voyeuristic sensation. She gives her money's worth, dredging up a glittering gutter gutsiness that gives the story a hard-boiled yet poignant romantic thrust. She's trashy, he's a swine; but they're in love The dynamic at times reminded me of Alex Cox's "Sid and Nancy."
Much ado has been made by out-of-touch PC pundits like Gloria Steinem that this movie makes a hero out of Larry Flynt, a vile, exploitative pornographer. It never even tries to make a hero of Flynt. That would be impossible. Instead we get a well-rounded portrayal of a manipulative lowbrow huckster who just so happens to have struck a blow for freedom in his quest for the big buck and the zipless fuck. How quintessentially American!
It is an anomaly in big-buzz Hollywood productions; a film that provides uplift without layering on the sweetener. In the end, the movie reaffirms our basic freedom to offend anyone we damn well please. It is about time we remembered basic little rights like those set forth within the First Amendment. It is also about time we start speaking our minds again. This film hearkens back to the strain of anti-establishment "message" films of the early 70s without resorting to the overearnest preachiness of the genre. Bravo to Forman, Harrelson, Love, Norton and the rest of the crew for at last filming a movie that is interesting to adults.