An excellent premise for a movie told fine.
The idea behind this movie is fantastic. A man (David Oyelowo) gets a call from his murdered niece (Storm Reid). While this movie doesn't add much to its premise, it still tells its story pretty well. The emotional scenes early in the movie when Jack has to deal with the aftermath work very well. Much of this is due to the excellent performance by David Owelowo. He hits every emotional mark perfectly throughout this movie. Because of this his performance brings a reality to even some of the most cliché parts. The twists in this movie (especially one towards the end) are quite good twists and can easily take you by surprise. The visual filmmaking is also quite good and definitely keeps your attention for the whole film.
Where this movie falls short is on the characters, dialogue and pacing. Our main character is quite likable, however all the others are as bland as can be. Unfortunately this even includes the niece. The dialogue can be extremely cliché and some of it is downright groan-worthy. This is very disappointing, because a film like this could have brought some real thought-provoking and insightful dialogue, but the movie completely misses this opportunity. Last but not least this movie moves way too fast. It needed to slow down and simply let us stop and take in what happened. However it seems to rush from plot point to plot point with little time for anything in-between.
Despite its major faults, this movie still presents us with a good story, great acting and some very impressive moments of filmmaking.
-Michael J. Ruhland
No comments:
Post a Comment