Review: 'Boulevard' Starring Robin Williams in His Final Performance

The many belly laughs Robin Williams so ably gave us throughout his career will never be forgotten, but it was his smaller, darker, melancholic performances that really resonate. So it's fitting in a way that his final on-screen role (he voices a dog in a Monty Python comedy later this year) would be a downbeat film like Boulevard, the latest indie effort from Fighting and A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints director Dito Montiel. It's the kind of somber mood piece that Williams came to be known for, and he proves once again how great of a talent he truly was, even if the film's content is thin, its revelations unsurprising, and the tone too somber to be fully enjoyed.

Williams plays Nolan, a 60-year-old man who has lived his entire life just being comfortable. He works in a boring job as a banker; his wife Joy (Kathy Baker) sleeps in a separate room and they seem to barely communicate; and he occasionally checks in on his hospitalized, catatonic father even though they never got along. It's "what you're supposed to do" he rationalizes, putting the outward appearance of his actions at the forefront. It's all about appearances for Nolan, who would rather not stir the pot than do anything that would truly make him happy. 

See, Nolan is secretly a homosexual, and the gist of the film is him trying to come to grips with that fact. In 2015 and so recently having seen gay marriage legalized across the country, it feels a bit old-fashioned to have a film about a person realizing their own homosexuality. But that really is the entirety of the story penned by Douglas Soesbe, who gives Nolan a gay prostitute named Leo (Roberto Aguire) to fall in love with. Nolan picks him up on the boulevard, but he doesn't want sex. He's content to merely talk with and gaze into the eyes of the anxious young man, who can't understand what this older, obviously gay man truly wants. Their encounters are frequent, Nolan lavishing Leo with money, gifts, and even a job offer to get him off the streets. He wants to save this young man in lieu of saving himself. 

Naturally this all builds to Nolan coming to accept the truth about himself, but the screenplay fails to show how Leo helps to make that happen. Better are the scenes between Nolan and the long-suffering Joy; both of them denying the truth in a shroud of comfortable lies. Williams is terrific, offering another sensitive, understated portrayal that many others would have oversold. But the story lacks any real teeth. There's nothing that suggests why the stakes are so high for Nolan now after all of these years. There's also a frustrating lack of sexuality which is weird for a movie about a person's sexual identity. Boulevard is just sad, in more ways than one. While the film is well beneath his talents, Williams reminds us one final time how deeply his absence will be felt.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5