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" Florida is America&amp;#039;s most confounding state. Everybody knows about the California dream or the New York state of mind. Texas and New Hampshire can be summed up with clich\u00E9s: &amp;quot;Everything&amp;#039;s Bigger in Texas,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Live Free or Die.&amp;quot; But Florida is not so easy to pigeonhole. I go there every year, and I like it, but what exactly is it? God&amp;#039;s waiting room filled with a healthy measure of Southern-fried Bubbas, a paradise on earth covered with some of the most hideous highways in the world, super-hot Cubans beside old Jewish retirees beside toothless meth-heads beside Qu\u00E9b\u00E9cois snowbirds. There have been great films set in Florida: Key Largo and Monster and Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach. But The Paperboy is the first really great film about Florida, about just how weird it is. The plot of The Paperboy (based on Pete Dexter&amp;#039;s 1995 novel) is deceptively simple, boilerplate film-noir stuff. A pair of journalists work to exonerate a man on death row, compelled by a woman who has become engaged to him through sending and receiving letters. Everything devolves into sexual depravity and violence, of course. Lee Daniels, the director who gave us Precious and was a producer on Monster&amp;#039;s Ball, decides to take every risk he can in the film&amp;#039;s execution, which produces a series of bizarre, unforgettable images loosely stitched together. Several acting careers will have to be reconsidered after this film. It&amp;#039;s worth the price of admission just for the scene in which a poorly lit Nicole Kidman pisses all over Zac Efron&amp;#039;s face. John Cusack masturbates to Kidman ripping her pantyhose open in a prison meeting room, and the stain on his pants is now more horrifically memorable to me than Say Anything. Strangest of all, it turns out that Zac Efron, the closest example of a living Ken Doll we have, can actually act. He plays a kind of depilated male sex toy, who seems sad about his own plastic hotness. It&amp;#039;s kind of brilliant. Then there&amp;#039;s Matthew McConaughey (spoiler alert) spread eagle, tied up, being violently raped by two African-American men. McConaughey seems to be reading scripts only to see if they have the most daring parts he&amp;#039;s ever played, but this part is extreme even by that standard.  The story is told flamboyantly, operatically. The colors of Nicole Kidman&amp;#039;s dresses would be more appropriate on a Creamsicle than a woman. Superimposition, split screens, various cheesy, trashy film techniques are used throughout. It&amp;#039;s a Lifesaver-colored noir. The odd juxtapositions, the sense of delicious decay, the warmth and easiness are appealingly unique in their combination. Which makes it perfectly Floridian. It&amp;#039;s amazing, and perhaps appropriate, that the American election gets decided every four years largely on the basis of who votes in this strange, mixed-up, indefinable place.  The Paperboy is a well-made, fascinating film, but whether you want to see it or not is more or less the same the decision as whether you want to go to Florida itself. You probably do, even if you don&amp;#039;t care to admit it. Like the state itself, it&amp;#039;s just so much trashy fun.  Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a16135/the-paperboy-review-13403628/?src=rss>