Opens Friday! "'Captain Fantastic' is one of the year’s best movies"

‘Captain Fantastic’ is one of the year’s best movies

REVIEW: Viggo Mortensen shines as a free-spirit patriarch whose family is forced into the outside world | ★★★½ out of 4 stars

By Lou Lumenick, New York Post                                                       July 29, 2016 | 11:36am

Viggo Mortensen and Annalise Basso in "Captain Fantastic." Photo: Wilson Webb / Bleecker Street

Ben is a survivalist who home-schools his six children in a yurt in a pristine Pacific Northwest forest, far from the corrupting influences of contemporary society.

Played by a bearded Viggo Mortensen in the performance of his career in Matt Ross’ terrific “Captain Fantastic,’’ this off-the-grid dad gives the kids hunting knives as presents for the family’s version of Christmas, activist Noam Chomsky’s birthday.

Then, one day, they all get an opportunity to stick it to the man — in this case, Ben’s affluent father-in-law, Jack (Frank Langella). Jack, the kids’ grandpa, is planning a conventional funeral for his daughter — Ben’s wife, Leslie, who committed suicide after a lengthy illness. That funeral, Ben believes, goes against everything she stood for.

Piling into an old school bus crammed with books, this counterculture family heads out to disrupt the planned funeral in New Mexico, stopping along the way to group shoplift from a grocery store — Ben’s unique form of grief therapy for the kids.

Without giving too much away, let’s just say things don’t necessarily go according to plan. Ben, it’s suggested, isn’t necessarily doing his children a favor by isolating them and encouraging extreme behavior.

“Captain Fantastic” isn’t only one of the year’s best movies, but one of the best cast and best acted, right down to the smaller roles — such as Ann Dowd as Jack’s sympathetic wife, and Kathryn Hahn and Steve Zahn in a single scene as the kids’ aunt and uncle, who are stunned to encounter youngsters who, unlike their own, aren’t glued to electronic devices.

Stunningly photographed by Stéphane Fontaine, “Captain Fantastic’’ belongs to the fully committed Mortensen and the wonderful, pitch-perfect young actors who play his offspring confronted by a new world: in descending order of age, George MacKay, Samantha Isler, Annalise Basso, Nicholas Hamilton, Shree Crooks and Charlie Shotwell.

Viggo Mortensen with the actors who play his children in "Captain Fantastic," including George MacKay, Nicholas Hamilton, Annalise Basso and Samantha Isler. | Bleeker Street

Watch: 'Captain Fantastic' Official Trailer