The Hawk Is Dying

Yet another sterling performance by Oscar-nominee Paul Giamatti distinguishes this ambitious but dreary yarn based on a novel by Harry Crews. Giamatti plays unfulfilled blue-collar worker George Gattling, who responds to a family tragedy by submersing himself into the training of a wild hawk. George's obsession with the fiercely independent red-tail puzzles his dysfunctional relatives, who can't understand that he sees breaking the hawk's will as a means of overcoming feelings his of helplessness and despair. Unfortunately, director Julian Goldberger never entirely manages to surmount the inherent clumsiness of the script's metaphorical device, and the film's self-conscious symbolism weighs it down. Oscar-nominee Michelle Williams costars as a lonely student with whom George carries on an intermittent affair. Not a necessary purchase (E. Hulse)