Affliction

Affliction (1998) is Paul Schrader's crime drama — watch it online on iFILM. Nick Nolte plays Wade Whitehouse, a small-town sheriff running on fumes: a bad marriage behind him, a custody fight ahead of him, and a father whose cruelty never quite left the house. When a prominent man dies during a hunting trip, Wade decides this case will be the one that makes him matter.

It doesn't go that way. The deeper he digs into what may or may not be a murder, the more the investigation turns inward — toward his own rage, his own unravelling. Sissy Spacek plays the woman still in his corner, while James Coburn as the father is all cold menace and quiet contempt. Willem Dafoe narrates from the outside, as Wade's brother who got out and watched what followed from a safe distance.

Schrader adapted Russell Banks' novel — the same writer who gave us The Ice Storm. Coburn took home the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this role, and earned every bit of it. This is not a film where the mystery is the point; it's about inheritance — what fathers leave behind that sons can't shake. Stream Affliction (1998) on iFILM.