In many ways, Ed Asner’s performance in Tiger Within feels like his love letter to acting and the power of movies to convey a message. It’s not only his final film role, but he stars opposite a young newcomer in Margot Josefsohn, who totally carries the film along with him. Additionally, Tiger Within unflinchingly explores a variety of tough emotional, societal, and historical issues, making it a solid teaching tool for teens and a worthy outlet for Asner’s gravitas.
Josefsohn plays Casey, a midwestern teenager whose situation goes well beyond the word “troubled.” Her mother is emotionally absent and abusive; her father is out of the picture. This compels her to run away to Los Angeles, where her situation gets much worse. Just when this becomes almost too sad to watch, Samuel (Asner) enters the picture, meeting Casey while she sleeps in the graveyard where his wife is buried. He offers to take her in and she accepts somewhat resentfully, as her experiences have made her distrustful of the world.
Casey is also quite ignorant of history, but Samuel recognizes that this is clearly not her fault. A Holocaust survivor himself, Samuel gently opens Casey’s mind about a great many things, including, but not limited to tolerance, compassion, trust, purpose, and the idea of chosen family.
Appropriately enough, Asner’s and Josefsohn’s dueling screen presences are as feisty as their characters. Josefsohn consistently goes above and beyond simply holding her own against Asner, but the mere fact that she does is highly impressive. When you take into consideration the weighty subjects the film asks her to deal with, her performance is doubly awe-inspiring. Asner here employs a deft balance of calm and credibility. Samuel helps Casey from a place of sheer altruism, but he believably won’t condone nonsense.
Veteran director Rafal Zielinski doesn’t always manage to keep the film walking the same tightrope as his talented lead actors, however. Tiger Within often fluctuates between scenes of stunning insight and moments that lack all subtlety whatsoever. Its heart is never in the wrong place, though there are some moments and plot threads that I would want parents to be aware of, because as I alluded to earlier, the film seems most effective as a way to start meaningful, frank conversations with teens about some mature subject matter. The moments I’m referring to mostly have to do with the ways Casey survives being homeless in Los Angeles and how she is exploited. Nothing explicit is shown or even implied, but the frankness with which Zielinski and screenwriter Gina Wendkos address that part of Casey’s story may be too much to handle for some families.
I think of this as a mature-family-talk kind of movie partly because its beginning and ending especially operate like an after-school special. The middle of the movie, which features all of Asner and Josefsohn’s scenes together, is tremendously compelling outside of that notion. It’s not the worst thing in the world that the bookends aren’t great, but had they matched the quality of the middle and not felt so rushed, it would have made for a better film overall.
In any case, the tremendous lead performances and important subject matter make the film worth considering as a conversation-starter; a jumping-off point for further education about some of the world’s harsh realities. The incomparable Ed Asner did well to contribute his considerable talents to a worthy cause. | George Napper
In addition to a limited theatrical release, Tiger Within is also available on Video-on-Demand and digital platforms.
