Actors, when they turn director, usually assume that the human face and body are always the most interesting things on-screen. That can be a nuisance, as it occasionally is in “Collaborator,” written, directed by and starring the actor Martin Donovan (“Weeds”) — but strong performances carry this film.
Robert Longfellow (Donovan) is a playwright who’s just had the most disastrous opening of his life. Back he goes to Mom’s house to lick his wounds. Across the street lives Gus (David Morse), an unemployed ex-con who makes Robert look like a dream of success. One night Gus shows up with beer and weed, and Robert invites him in, only to be taken hostage when it turns out Gus has done something bad enough to bring a SWAT team down on them.
It’s simply plotted and quietly filmed in long, steady takes. There’s an extended setup involving other skilled actors — Katherine Helmond as Robert’s mother, Olivia Williams as his lost love — but the heart of the movie is a two-hander, and Donovan and Morse are ferociously good. The playwright is selfish and snobbish, lying to his wife and kids; the ne’er-do-well is undereducated, vulgar and so needy he’s willing to find companionship at gunpoint. Neither gets much more likable, but both characters are riveting, and they even manage to earn most of the freight that Donovan loads onto his heavily ironic title.