Truly Dreadful Film

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Blistering performances.

The good - Amy Adams. Jake G. The superimposed story-in-story. The cleverly conceived shots. The ending. The subtle nuances which makes this a "veiled threat and a revenge". Tom Ford's direction. The Lynchian undercurrent of tension. The bad - (Or is that a good and intentional thing?) - The movie leaves you feeling somewhat incomplete on a lot of fronts. I bet you won't watch this movie a second time even if you really liked it, because we only want to recreate wholesome experiences. This one leaves you hanging. Just like Amy's character at the dinner table.

An absolutely shallow attempt at trying to make a deep movie. Complete waste of time.

The opening credits feature some morbidly obese women dancing naked and it's enough to make you vomit. And I see not point why this is in the picture. The rest of movie is a study in strong violence and language, so if you like lots of "f" words and brutal violence, then this is the movie for you. And then they throw in some Evangelical Christian bashing directed it at Laura Linney's character and once again there is no point for this being in the movie at all. I think they tried to make a shocker like Silence Lambs or Blue Velvet, but it just didn't work for me.

I did have my preconceptions of this film, which were based upon the mixed reviews of it. I had heard it was superficial, and yet others were lavishing praise upon it. The mixed reviews I confess attracted me to the film, and I wanted to see the side of the argument, I would come down upon.The positives first of all. It is beautifully filmed - it's slick, polished and the colours are luscious. It also has an astonishing beginning, which is one of those beginnings in where you go wow and are both 'magnetically' attracted and perhaps if you admit it a little repelled despite your pc correctness saying no you shouldn't be. It has a Lynchian quality to it and offers the promise of a quite wonderful and strange film. The other quality the film has is it's structure - a film within a film. The structure in itself allows for exciting ideas to be developed, and the film makes use of that structure to good if not quite, however, outstanding effect.One other positive, and it has to be said because so much of the film lingers on Amy Adams, is that she is quite simply stunning looking. This may seem like an archaic value judgement, and yet the film does depend upon her attraction to match the slickness of the film. Now this is a problem as well, because Amy Adams isn't really asked to do that much acting, and when the dramatic scenes come you are not quite convinced you care about the fate of her or the other people in the film.The film with in a film does however contain a fine performance from MIchael Shannon; a dying cop investigating the rape and murder of Jake Gyllenhall's characters family. Jake Gyllenall is also the ex-husband of Amy Adams who has sent the film script of this film to her. Therefore the setup is about how much does this film relate to Amy Adams relationship with her ex husband. Amy Adam's character is unhappily married as well, and therefore her ex-husband by way of the script (which by the way is good) reawakens a wish in her to go back to him. There is a critical problem however in that she aborted their child. This is revealed fairly late on in the film and adds a new dimension to the film with in the film.This though is the problem: does the film with in the film convincingly relate to the overall story. I wasn't really convinced because I didn't think there was an explicit enough connection between both sides of the film. The film with in the film to be fair would have made a good enough film on its own. The acting unfortunately is rather uneven throughout both 'films'. Jake Gyllenhall seems too intense for the role, and the film really needed to allow its actors more room for subtlety.This is a complicated and ambtious film and it is very well made, but something is missing from it. It isn't a purely superficial film, because there is depth underlying it. There are characters who are genuinely damaged, but the film ends up being more superficial because it doesn't allow room for the characters to be fully developed. I think the film's main reveal about the abortion comes too late in the film. It might have changed our earlier perceptions of where the film with in film was going and maybe this would have got me more involved with the film within a films meaning.This is a difficult film to review, and you have to see it to really understand, why people have mixed feelings about it. I admired the acheivement, but wasn't emotionally involved in the story. The film isn't a failure, but it is a film that doesn't quite work and it's ending is rather anti-climatic. The film just didn't quite nail it. .