| | Review Date: Director: Mike Barker Writer: Ted Griffin Producers: Sean Bailey, Betsy Beers, Alan Greenspan… Actors: Alessandro Nivola Reese Witherspoon Josh Brolin |
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The plot line follows the same general “small town” film noir, murder/deception vibe, similar to the Coens’ BLOOD SIMPLE or Dahl’s RED ROCK WEST, but the story never really pulled me in.
I think that the main point with any “small” movie as such is to make sure that the audience emphatizes with the lead character (who’s generally in a bind), but in this film, I rarely felt anything for the main guy, Alessandra Nivola. He never came off as much of a “nice guy” to me, so I never really gave a shit about what happened to him…or the other characters, for that matter.
Having said that, Josh Brolin was pretty good as the nerdo accused of rape, and Reese came through as well, but without much identification with the characters, the slow pace of the film just dragged me down.
The film also uses the ol’ PULP FICTION, time-scene-element succesfully to some degree, but doesn’t establish the characters well enough at first, so that you don’t really care much about them afterwards.
Also, I enjoyed the “twist” ending initially, but after thinking about it a little more, it just felt sort of like cheating. Like the whole journey hadn’t meant as much as I thought it did.
Anyway, nothing great here, according to me. Anyone else seen it? I think it went straight to video or played only in NY and LA.