It's an overstatement to say Salvation Boulevard, which finds its core in the ironic notion that beneath every pearly-toothed Bible thumper lurks the soul of a bad, bad man, is milking an old joke dry. After all, the real-life instances in which purportedly moral men turn out to be sinners - Anthony Weiner; John Edwards; the recent, sad history of the Catholic Church - have grown so rapidly over the past few years that it's barely even good joke fodder anymore; milking the premise for laughs has become kind of a tricky subject for a movie to navigate. As one character says late in the film, "if you follow a preacher, you're always gonna find something interesting." The line is played (successfully) for yuks, but they are, for better or worse, the kind that stick in your throat.There's something to be said, though, for the fact that Salvation Boulevard, in which the sinner is a gaudy Christian preacher (Pierce Brosnan) and his sin the accidental, nonfatal shooting of a scruffy, agnostic-ish academic (a funny Ed Harris) -- did I mention this is a comedy? -- doesn't necessarily try to tiptoe around this obstacle as mow it down with a bulldozer. The film is long on chutzpah (to evoke a different denomination) but as a result short on finesse. From the outset, everything is laid out painfully clear: the rich, ostentatious preacher is actually a villain (because he turns his flock's blind devotion into awesome power), and the godless hippie is really a good guy (because despite his past hedonism, he wants peace and quiet above all else and doesn't bother anyone). People are who they are and they cannot, and will not, change, just put on a show. It is what it is, take it or leave it.Bold statement, but there isn't a single fully developed character in the whole damn thing. Perhaps it's fitting that a film satirizing religion deals entirely in archetypes and, if done correctly, this type of movie can be pretty fun for what it is, but rarely is it ever the kind of witty satire Salvation Boulevard seems to be marketing itself as. The characters themselves aren't terribly un-interesting on paper (think regular folks who only came with a single, albeit extremely noticeable, defective personality trait), but rather, the actors just seem bored.Our hero is Carl Vandermeer (Kinnear), whose story at least has an interesting beginning. Carl is a Deadhead gone straight-edge after experiencing a come-to-Jesus moment some years prior that landed him, to his lingering confusion, in the megachurch congregation of Pastor Dan Day (Brosnan). Carl's also trapped in a passionless marriage to a holy-rolling painter named Gwen (Jennifer Connelly) who shares a mutual, if extremely awkward - both in presentation and execution - attraction with the good Pastor.Kinnear is admirably discombobulated throughout, like Carl has been waiting some twenty years to make his exit without offending anyone (Kinnear himself seems similarly confused as to how he ended up in this movie). This serves him well in the name of comedy after the fateful shooting and subsequent frame job, wherein Carl becomes Dan's unwitting patsy. Plus, as The Dude showed us, there's not much funnier than a pothead on the run. But Carl's a D-list Dude wannabe, right down to the wrongfully-accused bit. He throws in "dude" and "man" at the end of every other sentence to remind the audience that, yes, he used to be a stoner, but as admirably frazzled as Kinnear is, it's still only half a character, and not one who elicits much in the way of sympathy.Again, maybe that's the point when dealing with characters like these, but almost everyone else suffers a similar case of one-note development. Absent redeeming qualities in their roles, all that's left for the actors to do is run around and make lots of noise. So Connelly bounces off the walls in a performance that shows the strain of effort but reaps almost no benefits. Marisa Tomei and Yul Vasquez are also around for some reason; she doesn't do a thing and actually vanishes halfway through the movie, but at least Vasquez figures into the plot and is funny. Drawing the shortest stick is Ciarán Hinds as Gwen's father, whose sleuthing is set up as something of a major plot point, but who literally has no hand in the film's resolution.The one saving grace, as it were, is Brosnan, who hems and haws so mightily as Pastor Dan that the movie literally lights up everytime he's onscreen. If there is a soul to be found in this charlatan-in-clergyman's-clothing, he certainly gets close to digging it up, raising the idea during the rare quiet moment that the preacher man is, at his core, more terrified than anything of what awaits him on the other side. Brosnan's a hambone, for sure, but seems to be one of the few concerned with overcompensating for the script with gimmicks. He just plays it for maximum volume but seems to be winking the entire time (in contrast, Connelly works very, very hard to make Gwen more than she is on paper, but all it ends up feeling is forced). Then again, maybe it's just that Pastor Dan is the movie's best-written character, and Brosnan simply does a good job playing him. Maybe it's just because a guy like Pastor Dan is the easiest one to play. It's honestly hard to tell.The movie is based on a novel, which makes you feel like there might have been more to work with here at some point. But the script (by Doug Max Stone and director George Ratliff) is shockingly thin: plot contrivances pop up unannounced, characters come and go, and promising subplots (a mysterious caller adds a fun supernatural kink to the plot) are dropped in favor of watching Kinnear yell "hey, man!" some more. When actual divine intervention rears its head in the closing minutes, it barely elicits a reaction. Carl's the good guy. He always had God on his side, it's not like we needed a reminder. Still, the movie feels like we do. It is what it is, man.
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