A quarter-century after starring in a film called Floundering, James Le Gros still makes an ideal embodiment of his generation's ambivalence about joining the world of squares.
In Gary Lundgren's gently warm Phoenix, Oregon, the actor plays an unpublished comic book artist who, after years of tending bar for others, is talked into starting a business of his own.
Well cast with actors who help the film overcome an obviously meager budget, Phoenix is as rough at the edges as its protagonist, and will inspire a similar kind of sympathetic response — especially among viewers who've been through a few reversals and know not every rebound has to take the form of a glorious firebird to be worthwhile.
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