Flag Day (2022)
Director: Sean Penn
Screenwriters: Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth
Starring: Sean Penn, Dylan Penn, Addison Tymec, Katheryn Winnick, Jaydn Rylee, Josh Brolin, Hopper Penn
With much of the Penn family appearing both behind and in front of the camera, Flag Day promised an intimate portrait of a fractured family, centering on the tense, complicated bond between a father and his daughter. Sean Penn plays John Vogel, a flawed and charismatic con man, while his real-life daughter Dylan Penn portrays Jennifer, a young woman coming to terms with her past. That premise—real family members playing familial roles—offers an immediate potential for emotional authenticity and raw performance.
Unfortunately, despite the promise, the finished film often feels muddled and undercooked. The performances are not without merit: Dylan Penn delivers scenes of fierce emotionality, and Sean Penn gives John a measure of nuance, showing a man who oscillates between genuine care and self-destructive impulse. But fine performances alone cannot salvage a movie when the direction, editing, and writing fail to cohere into a compelling whole.
Directionally, the film suffers from an uneven visual approach. There are moments that suggest Sean Penn understands how to shape a scene—toward the film’s end, sequences tighten and reveal a clearer dramatic rhythm—but much of the runtime is marred by fussy camerawork. Excessive handheld movement and repetitive zooms call attention to themselves rather than serving the story. At times, simple, powerful images are undermined by an unnecessary push-in that signals intent instead of trusting the frame to communicate on its own.
The editing compounds the problem. Cuts often interrupt emotional beats instead of letting them breathe, preventing scenes from accumulating the weight they should. A striking sequence—Jennifer fleeing her home in the dark and passing beneath a bridge—contains an affecting visual composition, yet its impact is undercut by intrusive editorial choices. When editing erodes the audience’s chance to inhabit a character’s interior life, empathy becomes harder to build, and that empathy is essential in a film focused on family trauma and reconciliation.
On the writing side, the screenplay leans toward bluntness and familiar rhythms. Dialogue occasionally slips into cliché instead of revealing deeper character truth. The film’s structure also works against it: the opening quarter plays like a series of disconnected vignettes, introducing scenes and tones that suggest more cohesion than is ultimately delivered. When the narrative finally settles into a clearer, chronological path, the film improves—but by then the early fragmentation has diminished the forward momentum and dulled the impact of the conclusion.
Tonally, Flag Day aims for a tender, observational quality, but the film’s apparatus—direction, camera movement, and editing—frequently pushes for manufactured emotion rather than allowing quiet, earned moments to land. The result is a bildungsroman that feels both overworked and underdeveloped: it recycles familiar themes about family, betrayal, and forgiveness without adding a distinct perspective or fresh insight.
That is not to say the movie lacks virtues. There are honest, affecting scenes where the actors connect and reveal truthful textures of a broken family trying to survive itself. Sean Penn’s performance provides glimpses of a man both charming and dangerous, and Dylan Penn shows rawness that suggests potential for future roles. Smaller supporting performances also offer moments of color and humanity.
Yet on balance, the film’s technical and structural weaknesses limit its effectiveness. A clearer directorial vision and more disciplined editing could have transformed scattered good moments into a cohesive, moving whole. As it stands, Flag Day often feels like an opportunity missed: a project with committed performances and an interesting premise that never quite finds a way to make all its parts add up.
7/24
Vertigo Releasing presents Flag Day in cinemas and on digital 28 January.