Rhombus Media, Roxbury Pictures, Mecanismo Films,
Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, Isabella Rossellini, Jane Moffat, Joshua Peace, Tim Post
Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a boring history professor living a humdrum life with his live in girlfriend Mary (Melanie Laurent). While watching a rental movie, he sees an actor who looks exactly like him. Curious, he tries to find everything he can find out about Anthony (Jake Gyllenhall) who is an actor in Toronto. As he becomes more interested (obsessed) with Anthony, he arranges a meeting where they find out they are absolute twins of each other, including the same scars. But their personalities seem to be very different.
This is a very, very strange movie. But it is a very good story, although I do think most people are going to hate it. It is a very weird story. It bends your mind! There have only been a few films with this kind of mind bending storytelling. The ending of The Sixth Sense and The Village, two (in my opinion) M. Night Shaymalan films twisted my mind. Certainly I didn’t see the twist in A Beautiful Mind coming, and I was completely disappointed in myself that I never saw that coming. There have been some others. But these films twisted you up in knots and then blasted you with the truth suddenly and you came away saying WOW! This film is NOT going to tell you the truth, or let you know how any of this is possible. I struggled for days after watching this thinking it was the biggest waste of opportunity in film making ever! The focus of this story is WAY off. Here we have a situation where there are two guys who do not know each other who are identical in so many ways that obviously something very strange is going on. All the way through I was looking for the big payoff. It never came. The ending knocked me down, but I was left thinking “What the hell was that?” There was no payoff. But I thought and I read and reviewed what was going on, and finally it hit me. I don’t want to give away any secrets, but think long on hard about how two guys could be so alike but so different. Think of how they’re alike and how they’re different. After having fought my way through this I found that this was actually a very good film, but in a way far different than what I expected. This is a very thoughtful story, and if you don’t like to think long and hard, but like your movies tied up neatly with a bow, then you’ll probably hate this movie and you should avoid it like the plague. But if you like a mental puzzle and a major challenge, you may find that this is really an awesome story. So far the vast majority of people I have talked to hated it, so watcher beware!
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
