Underrated director Bernard Rose (Candyman) buries his tendency to sex things up in Two Jacks, his latest update of a Leo Tolstoy tale. In this case, it's Tolstoy's short story "Two Hussars." The movie contrasts father and son scoundrels, one somewhat more lovable than the other, in a Hollywood setting. Familiar incidents and people link the two in mirror storylines differentiating Old Hollywood in the form of dad, famed filmmaker Jack Hussar, Sr. (Danny Huston), from New Hollywood in the person of his son, novice director Jack Hussar, Jr. (Danny's nephew Jack Huston of Boardwalk Empire). Though the opportunity is there for Rose to indulge in his usual eroticizing, the casting of the gorgeous Sienna Miller as Diana, a young actress who has a memorable fling with Jack Sr., is the extent of the director's foray into sexual territory. What the ultra-low budget Two Jacks does well is allow Rose to continue liberating himself from the regimented stylistic flourishes he had mastered in films like Immortal Beloved.
