Ed's Review Dot Com

The Film Community, Electric Entertainment,

Josh Charles, Julia Stiles, Avan Jogia, Tracie Thoms, Leo Fitzpatrick, Mike Houston, Jasper Newell

Tom Seymour (Josh Charles) is a psychologist, married to his wife Lauren (Julia Stiles), and the two are down by the sea when they notice a young man jumping off the pier. Despite his wife’s warnings, Tom climbs the fence and jumps in to save this young man from drowning himself. When he meets his new patient, Danny Miller (Avan Jogia) he learns that he is the same man that he saved from drowning, but also the man was the boy of 11 that his testimony sent away to prison decades before. How odd that the two are once again together, but Tom soon finds Danny inserting himself into his life in very strange ways. Was it all a coincidence, or is Danny really dangerous? This is an eerie mystery and a creeping insight into Tom’s secrets.

This seems like a movie based on a book that might be very, very good. But the movie lacks a lot. The characters are relatively well developed which is more than I can say about the story itself. The script never gets off the ground, and is a bit of an abortion. I’m not sure what the makers of this film were aiming for, but I’m disappointed that they seemed to miss the mark entirely. The film is very slow and dragging, and each moment you think that something is going to make sense, it doesn’t. All in all, the air above my head was filled with question marks throughout the whole film, and I never figured out what it could possibly mean. Who is Julia Stiles supposed to be, and what use is she to the film. Sadly, she has a mysterious role that we never get a clue of. I don’t know who this kid/man is/was, and by the end I really didn’t care. Is the doctor an evil bastard, an abused wimp, or a hero of some sort? Hell if I know. It ended, and the big surprise ending didn’t do anything to bring anything to a close either. After it was all over, I’m just completely confused as to what it was all about. This movie really looked like it had a superior idea for a story that just fizzled out after the initial rescue and never recovered. Now I’m left wondering if this actually based on a decent book that could give me some peace at understanding this tale, or if it’s just something I need to forget and move on to the next movie and forget this ever happened.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

SimonSays Entertainment, Stephen Tedeschi Production, Intrinsic Value,

Isaiah Washington, Tequan Richmond, Joey Lauren Adams, Tim Blake Nelson, Cassandra Freeman, Leo Fitzpatrick

This biopic is the story of a young boy brought to the states and mentored by a bizarre substitute father who teaches him how to kill. The two of them set out in the Blue Caprice to kill 10 random people in the 2002 Beltway Shootings. [Here is the Wikipedia article on the shootings]

I was anxious to watch this film. I saw the news coverage of the crazy story that had everyone in the Maryland, Virginia, D.C. are in terror back in 2002. I was sorely disappointed. The story was very poorly done. Granted, they wanted to make this look like a documentary, but when you’re done watching it, you’re more confused about the why of the story than when you started. With no apparent attempt to get into the minds of these two, this story just plods along like a reality TV show. Most of it is really boring, and we don’t get into the psyche of these guys at all. There is very little background info at all, and it’s a lot like a high school civics report on the subject. If you read the articles on the internet you’ll have as much understanding of this story as you will get from the movie. I was really bored silly and quite put off by the whole thing. I can’t believe I wasted the time I spent watching this. I kept thinking that it would get more interesting as we got to the climax of the movie. It never did, and when it was over, I just found myself wondering why they bothered with this. Skip this one. It truly wasn’t worth it.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog