2014 drama
Rating: 13/20 (Jennifer: 15/20)
Plot: A creep's wife turns up missing. A media circus ensues while the guy and some detectives try to figure out the truth.
I didn't like this movie for the same reason I don't like television cop dramas. For all their glitzy grittiness, they just seem all that realistic. I didn't trust any of the motivations of any of these characters, and that was from top to bottom. Ben Affleck's character, Rosamund Pike's character, the detectives, Neil Patrick Harris, the wife's parents, the college student. None of what these characters did or felt or said in this movie ever felt coherent. Affleck and Pike's performances are fine, but the characters were so flatly written. There were dimensions, but they were flat movie drama dimensions if that makes any sense. I just never felt that any of these characters were real, and in a drama like this, that's going to sink things. I was drawn into the story for the duration even though the movie was entirely too long, but so much of it just seemed silly or implausible, and the former clashed with the Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score. I'd give some examples, but it would spoil the entire movie. I didn't think the story was predictable, one thing the screenplay definitely had going for it, even though that might actually be because nothing makes much sense. I'm not exactly sure what this movie is supposed to tell me although it makes for a cynical metaphor for marriage. It could have had something intelligent to say about the media's role in cases like this or the way American audiences of said media react to this sort of thing, but it really doesn't do that. Instead, it just kind of entertains in a way that a bloated television drama would entertain, except with a lot more blood and raunchiness.
I mistakenly thought this was a Best Picture nominee, and I'm happy to see that it isn't.
5 comments:
I thought the story had originality with the questionable protagonist. It's not often that we don't trust the character that we're supposed to connected with. I like that the characters were all untrustworthy. Having said that, you're right: they were all stock characters written with flat characterizations. I thought it was entertaining, but I agree that it all went on a little too long.
I do enjoy movies where I'm forced to root for somebody I have a difficult time liking. And I'd agree that the story was original. Unfortunately, I just didn't think it all added up.
Since this is the comments, I don't have to worry about spoilers. What made me groan was when the wife, after being brutally raped repeatedly and then bathed in the blood of Neil Patrick Harris, was allowed to just go home so quickly after the trip to the hospital. With blood all over her face still! It was ludicrous.
Yeah, the entire 3rd act became so far-fetched that it lost a lot of cred. I especially had the ending all figured out in my head, and then it all let me down. I thought she'd get caught and simply go to jail. Even get pregnant and be forced to have her own child resent her...something psychologically punishable like that. Needless to say, the story let me down.
By the way, the books about the same. The movie, I thought, was actually BETTER than the book.
Well, Johnny removed his comment, but I'll respond anyway. My favorite part of this was the media circus angle and with that, the "innocent until proven guilty" thing that's been, at least in our contemporary social media laden times, flipped on its head.
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