‘THE PAPERBOY’

Nicole Kidman has always been at her best when allowed to be outrageous. She’s an anarchic character actress in the body of a leading lady, and here, as in “Birthday Girl” and “To Die For,” she gets to tap into her own perverse sense of humor.

In “The Paperboy,” she plays Charlotte, a Florida woman who has developed an erotic fixation on a prisoner serving time for murdering a sheriff. The year is 1969, and Kidman has the micro miniskirts and false eyelashes to prove it. Her Charlotte is trouble on two legs, utterly trashy and a sexual livewire.

The story revolves around an enterprising journalist, Ward (Matthew McConaughey), and his assistant (David Oyelowo), who come to Florida to try to secure the release of said murderer, because they believe him to be innocent. For Ward’s first interview with the prisoner, he brings along Charlotte, which turns out to be a mistake. The prisoner - played by John Cusack, having a ball playing a creep - will only talk to her, and the two start masturbating, shamelessly, right there in front of everybody.

This is actually the best scene in the movie: Two actors going for broke as extreme characters, in a moment that is peculiar and off-putting and yet strangely erotic.

Lee Daniels (“Precious”) is a good actors’ director, and everyone benefits: McConaughey is not just the breezy good ol’ boy, but someone blithe but haunted. Zac Efron, the nominal title character, shows confusion and need as the journalist’s kid brother. Indeed, everyone is interesting until the story kicks in, but kick it does, and Daniels’ soon finds he can’t direct around a botched screenplay - even one he co-wrote.

The story contains too much plot, too much exposition and too much explanation, and about halfway in, virtually every incentive to keep watching has evaporated. One might make a case that Kidman herself is reason enough to see “The Paperboy.” That’s a respectable case and one to be considered now that it’s on DVD, with the indispensable aid of that wonderful late-20th century invention: fast forward.

— Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

OUT THIS WEEK

“End of Watch,” “Searching For Sugar Man,” “Death Race 3,” “For A Good Time, Call…,” “Pina,” “The Quiet Man (60th Anniversary Edition).”