The Mend Is a Wonderful Psychodrama

Josh Lucas (Sweet Home Alabama, Secondhand Lions) has a knack for giving good performances in bad movies, so John Magary’s assured debut, The Mend, upends expectations by aligning a good actor with a good film. Normally a pleasant-looking man, Lucas appears to have bathed in a toilet bowl to play Mat, a Giant Id who lives to eat, drink, and fuck. Mat reconnects with his lawyer brother, Alan (Stephen Plunkett, equally strong), when he crashes his Harlem house party…