Thriller charting the moral collapse of a police family. Two cop brothers, smothered by the shadow of their former police chief father, must investigate a crime they themselves have committed. From: IMDb.com
Thriller charting the moral collapse of a police family. Two cop brothers, smothered by the shadow of their former police chief father, must investigate a crime they themselves have committed. From: IMDb.com
Directed by: Nick Murphy
Starring: Rosemarie DeWitt, Scoot McNairy, Ellen Page and others
This is a bit of an oddly constructed movie, that on the one hand is
trying to be like a good old fashioned farce and at the other also
still a very dry British costume drama. A combination that never works
out successfully for this movie.
And really, nothing wrong with a farce. When done right, it's simply
something very entertaining to watch, no matter how crazy and unlikely
stuff gets at times. But only when done right though! And no, I really
can't say that this movie ever got it right. It has lots of characters
talking over each other and it spends some time on showing some of
their eccentricities but the problem is that the writing is never truly
anything clever or witty. It just wasn't anything amusing or funny to
watch and instead annoyed me and somewhat bored me as well.
But I can't really say that the movie gets much better as it progresses
and starts to take on a different sort of approach to its story. Once
the dry drama kicks in, the movie isn't becoming anything more engaging
or interesting to watch. Again, mostly due to its lacking writing, that
never provides enough depth or background, to any of the movie its
characters. The whole concept of the movie falls sort of flat, as the
movie does a poor job at telling you why its main character doesn't
want to, or perhaps isn't allowed to be, around the character she is
truly in love with and it doesn't explain either why she is instead
marrying some random other guy, who she clearly isn't ever into at all.
She wants this guy to pursue her but once he does and gets to close,
she pushes him away again. I just don't get why women do this. You
either want a guy or you don't! Don't mess around with a guy's feelings
like that! This all so easily could have been resolved by inserting
some sort of conflict into the movie, that would make it clear why she
was ready to get married to some other guy. Perhaps due to the pressure
of her family, or because of money problems, or anything like that. But
no, the movie remains mostly vague about all of the character's
motivations. Perhaps you have to be a woman to understand? I don't know
but seeing how this movie got written by a woman and is mostly showing
and telling stuff from a female perspective, this could be the case for
this movie.
It's not like this movie was completely unwatchable for me though. It's
really too simplistic and harmless in its setup and execution to ever
do anything terribly wrong, or become a completely horrible one with
its characters or dialog. It has some good elements to it as well, such
as its look, that is fine, despite th movie its, still obvious, low
budget.
Still it's not a movie that I would recommend to anyone. Aside from its
lacking script and storytelling, it also isn't featuring the best
acting in it. Besides, it's somewhat annoying how this movie throws in
all sorts of characters that you never really get to know or care for.
It only adds to the confusion of things that are already happening in
the movie its main story and their personalities don't add anything to
either the fun or drama of the movie. The weak dialog certainly doesn't
help much either.
It's obviously not the worst thing out there but there still is no good
reason why you should ever watch it though.