In “Off the Black,” Nick Nolte dives beneath the blubber to bare the weary soul of Ray Cook, an automobile junkyard operator pushing 60 who also umpires high-school baseball games.
A heaving wreck of a man, Ray lives alone in a seedy cottage near a railroad track and drinks himself into a stupor each night.
Although he leaves Post-it messages in the refrigerator reminding himself to keep to a three-beer limit, he is incapable of following his own rules. As he leaves a medical examination, his doctor throws up his hands in frustration; he wouldn’t know where to begin operating. We get the message: Ray’s days are numbered.
“Off the Black,” the feature-film debut of the director James Ponsoldt, tells the formulaic story of Ray’s last hurrah, in which he blackmails a teenager into posing as his son and accompanying him to his 40th high-school reunion. As he and the pretender, Dave Tibbel (Trevor Morgan), go through the ritual, Nolte’s craggy face and phlegmy growl register every seismic rumble of Ray’s troubled psyche.
Ray and Dave first cross paths in a male version of meeting cute. Umpiring a ballgame in which Dave is pitching, Ray makes a critical call that walks a batter who scores the winning run. (The title “Off the Black” refers to a pitch that just misses the strike zone.) In revenge, Dave and two teammates vandalize Ray’s property.
As they flee, Ray wakes from his haze, grabs a gun and rushes outside, where he catches Dave and drags him into the house. Once they calm down, the frightened boy agrees to clean up the mess if Ray doesn’t call the police.
As Dave undoes the damage, the two become acquainted, and Ray develops enough of a liking for the vandal to take him fishing on the local river.
The movie follows Dave into his own troubled home where his father, a professional photographer (Timothy Hutton in an underwritten role), has been depressed since his wife left two years earlier. Frustratingly, the movie offers no explanation of why she left.
As a rehearsal for the reunion, Ray drags Dave to a hospital to visit Ray’s father (Michael Higgins), who has Alzheimer’s, and play the old man’s grandson; Dave passes the test.
“Off the Black” is so much Nolte’s movie that it couldn’t exist without him. His character is the latest in a long line of Hemingwayesque ruins, marinated in beer and testosterone, who have become Nolte’s specialty.
As fond as he is of these guys, Nolte has the wisdom and acting smarts not to sentimentalize them. In these roles, you often have the sense of this wonderful actor casting a pitiless, smirking gaze into the mirror as he contemplates his own decaying magnificence.
“Off the Black” | *** RATING
PG-13 for profanity|1 hour, 32 minutes|DRAMA|Written and directed by James Ponsoldt; photography by Tim Orr; starring Nick Nolte, Trevor Morgan, Sonia Feigelson, Rosemarie DeWitt, Timothy Hutton, Sally Kirkland, Noah Fleiss, Jonathan Tchaikovsky, Michael Higgins|Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.