livemeyer-41359 Reviews

Reclaim (2014)

Veteran actors let down by poor directing and bad script

[3/10 · 15 June 2018]

I wanted to like this movie both because of the subject being tackled and the quality of the actors. The four lead actors do a great job with what they're given, especially Rachelle Lefevre, who plays a convincingly distraught and desperate mother.

Sadly, the script has been "Hollywoodized." I hope the screenwriter and director White never work again. This could have been a tense, gritty thriller. Instead, it turned into an overblown, overwritten, hyperbolic mess.

The worst faux pas was the girl, Nina, picking up the gun at the end. This time wasting minute was intended to milk the climax but it's believability is a head-scratcher.

The rest of it fell into tired old tropes: the feeling that all is okay, but the bad guy isn't dead and you are captured and have to escape again; defying the laws of physics to escape a cliff-hanging car; shooting out the trunk latch from the inside; bad guys shooting bad guys 'cause, well, they're bad guys; bad guy shooting at good guy at nearly blank range in a narrow stairwell and missing (twice); good guy gets advantage of bad guy (girl) in a moment of distraction; cops do nothing except clean up the mess afterward; good guys are tied up but are left alone so they can manage to escape; and so on...

Human trafficking is a serious issue that deserved a serious story. This turned into a 80's episode of the A-team, sans Mr. T.

Acting: B- Directing: D Screenplay: F Sound Mixing, Soundtrack: C Special Effects: D Lighting, Cinematography: B

The Double (2013)

Promising story falls flat, suffers from a director that tries too hard

[4/10 · 29 November 2017]

Jesse Eisenberg heartily devours the dual-role of Simon and James in director Richard Ayoade's The Double. He is a treat to watch, beginning to end. Unfortunately, he is the only reason I watched to the end.

Simon is the type of person nobody sees or cares about, in an unglamorous, quasi-dystopian post-modern future-past office, reminiscent of (read: stolen from) Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Simon is not a clown; he's a serious, honest, hard-working individual, but is essentially an uninteresting, unimportant and invisible person. His fate is worse than that of a person that bad things happen to, because nothing happens to him. Security, his boss, the girl he likes, even inanimate objects like the subway and the elevator do not see him or respond to him.

When James, the new-hire, arrives at the office, Simon's world is turned upside down. Suddenly James is noticed for all the hard work Simon has been doing for years; girls see the same face, and are attracted to James but still ignore Simon. As James becomes more ingrained in the office and wins the approval of his superiors and associates, the more Simon is seen as less worthy. And of course, the girl of Simon's dreams can't see him for who he really is when James is in the spotlight. It's time for drastic action, if only he can summon the requisite bravery, and can solve the puzzle he's put himself in. People's opinions of him are much harder to sway when his carbon-copy is the better him in every way.

And this is where director Richard Ayoade falls flat. Through terrific lighting and exacting shots and specific manipulation of plot pieces, he fails to distinguish Simon from James in the most meaningful way: to the other characters around them. Though it is much more than a wink at the duality of our own existence as ego (what we see ourselves as) and objective (how others see us), it is near impossible to understand how not only do the other co-workers not see the two as identical in appearance (and not discuss this) but also how they see them as wholly different individuals, character-wise. This allows James to somehow con everyone into believing bad acts he committed were done by Simon, and good acts Simon did were his.

The crux of the film lies on this point: that because nobody sees him, Simon must be the one to own all negative character aspects. As Simon works harder to establish himself as the good character, he becomes less so. There is so much psychology going on here it is difficult to put into words. Far more challenging is for the director trying to put it into images. From the opening scene it is very obvious that the director is sending a strong message. It is this omnipresent stamp on every scene, every shot, that doesn't allow the movie to breathe. There is no build up and release, just one depressing scene after another. Poor Simon can't catch a break, and neither can we.

While the deliberate use of lighting and color is excellent and contributes to the mood, it seems rigueure du jour and the colors don't seem to set a tone or create a style. Music selections are unusual and offbeat, but not interesting enough, and no consistent style emerges from the selections.

Also deliberate is the underdevelopment of all secondary characters. We know nothing of Mia Wasikowska's character, except to accept that she's lonely like Simon. We know none of the office's other characters, save the supervisor, and he's as two dimensional as cardboard - as is the security guard, the investigators, the copy manager, and Simon's mother.

It's sad that as robust as Jesse Eisenburg has filled in the characters of Simon and James, the rest of this world is two- dimensional. While The Double has two of the main thing, it has too little of anything else to sustain it.

I Am Wrath (2016)

How not to make a revenge thriller

[3/10 · 1 April 2017]

I Am Wrath was just barely competent to watch. The opening mugging/murder scene had some of the worst continuity mistakes I've seen in a Hollywood blockbuster. While the cast was competent, the casting was stereotypical black/Latino bad guys and white "highly trained" good guys. I cringed at some of the lines. I imagine the script must have had many hands on it and many rewrites. John Travolta puts in an average performance, but the lightweight script and lackluster directing leave him out on a limb with this performance. And we are supposed to believe that Travolta at 62 years of age is a ball-busting tough guy? Originally Nick Cage was cast to play the lead, perhaps he's become wise enough to sniff out a stinker. At least his age would not have been so damning as it is for Travolta.

Speaking of tough guys, Christopher Meloni turned in an affable performance providing support and a touch of one-liner comedy. Alas it's difficult to believe he gets whacked in the shins by a baseball bat and the bat loses. In real life the bat would not break and he wouldn't have been able to walk for at least a week. His performance was the only bright spot in a movie that never hinted at being a buddy action-comedy but becomes one anyway. John Wick this movie is not.

The movie's biggest sin was its predictability. You knew right from the beginning why the wife was killed, who ordered the hit, and why the corrupt cops could do nothing about it. Then every step of the way you knew what Travolta's character was going to do, and never did we think that he wouldn't get away with it right up to the unsatisfying ending (gee, no surprises when the bullet proof vest is revealed early in the film).

I Am Wrath had no mystery, no discovery, and quite often no explanation. This would be exhibit 1A as to how Hollywood ruins movies.