“Flag Day” starts and ends with a high-stakes car chase, but that big pursuit is an anomaly.
A minor-key movie less invested in grand gestures than the intimate two-hander at its center, “Flag Day” isn’t about crimes so much as the personal toll they take on innocent bystanders.
Sean Penn’s first directorial effort since 2016’s “The Last Face” compensates for that misstep, if only just, with that lays out most of its emotional cards from the first act and offers few surprises along the way.
In the process, however, it allows Penn to pass his talent to the next generation, with his daughter Dylan Penn taking the lead in a stirring turn that injects the central family tension with authenticity.The younger Penn plays real-life journalist Jennifer Vogel, whose 2014 tome “Flim-Flam Man: The True Story of My Father’s Counterfeit Life” has been faithfully adapted by screenwriters Jez
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