Any film that asks viewers to take seriously the idea of Dennis Quaid as a writer is on a hiding to nothing from the first frame. To add insult to injury, the writing/directing pair behind this plodding drama get the actor, as writer Clay Hammond, to read from his latest book.
The writing (for which Quaid cannot be blamed) has to be heard to be believed and when he later starts intoning to a young acolyte about how writing is truer than real life (or some such tosh), it just gets worse.
Hammond's book is called The Words (in one of the film's many contrivances, it's a story within a story within a story) and it is our entry point into a literary thriller that will probably strike you as terribly sophisticated if your reading is limited to the back of the cereal packet at breakfast.
The Words (book and film) is about Rory Jansen (Cooper), a writer with ambition as large as his pile of rejection slips. When he stumbles across an unpublished manuscript - a heart-rending story of wartime tragedy - he presents it as his own to a publisher, under the inexplicably naff title The Window Tears.
The instant stardom that follows comes with its own risks. Enter Jeremy Irons' character, a man with no name. Spooky.
