‘& Sons’ Review: Bill Nighy’s Bad Dad Leads a Strong, Surprising Family Drama

The Wrap

Family, already a complicated, often painful part of our lives, is made into something even more challenging in the dynamic, deceptively intriguing drama “& Sons.” Directed by Pablo Trapero from a script he wrote with Sarah Polley that adapts the novel of the same name by David Gilbert, the film is a flawed yet fascinating film — although any review requires withholding a key piece of information about the plot to preserve the genuine experience of discovery that it provides.

What can be disclosed is that, if you take the film fully at its word, a critical revelation makes the experience into something closer to sociologically-driven science fiction or poetically postmodern, where the people are more important than the invention it proclaims to be real. With strong performances across the board, especially Bill Nighy in rare form as a bearded patriarch who sets everything in motion when he shares a secret out of fear that he will pass before he can disclose it, it’s darkly funny in stretches before becoming something more melancholic when you least expect it.

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