Film Review – Rebel in the Rye

Author, recluse, and legend J.D. Salinger has been mythologized to a point of no return. There’s no room for the real man anymore, with the “Catcher in the Rye” writer’s life subjected to countless literary offerings, news investigations, and simple fan adulation, with many hoping to achieve a glimpse of a man who, in 1951, created one of the most influential books of all time, and then, in 1959, stopped publishing for the rest of his life (he passed away in 2010). That nut is never going to be cracked, as evidenced in the supremely underwhelming 2013 documentary, “Salinger,” but such evidence isn’t about to stop writer/director Danny Strong, who makes his helming debut with “Rebel in the Rye,” endeavoring to explore Salinger’s life and times in a way that creates order to imagined chaos, finding guidance in clichéd bio-pic tonality, making the feature play like a constipated television movie.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com