Release Date: 25 December 2014
Directed by: Rupert Wyatt
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Jessica Lange
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2039393
My Rating: (4/10) ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆
This offering from director Rupert Wyatt (doing a bad Martin Scorsese impression) would infuriate me if I wasn't so mindful of showing more heated passion than anyone involved in the making of the film. Replace passion with quasi-philosophical, pseudo-introspective monologues spoken by every character with just enough "insider" film jokes to remind you there's a writer, and we got ourselves a picture!
I won't mention that if you had only this film to guide you, you might honestly believe that every person of color was either playing basketball or sitting in perfectly crossed shadows somewhere orchestrating your downfall. Unless of course it's your Korean gambling lord, in which case he's orchestrating your downfall from his well lit Korean nail salon slash gambling syndicate. Clearly it's a White Man's world and the other 64% of us are just living in it.
I also won't mention the dramatic and unnecessary weight loss that leaves our beloved Marky Mark pallid and grey and which, if it weren't so distracting, would at best be a mildly interesting character choice but instead reeks of egocentrism and Oscar baiting. I know I know, English-professors-on-the-verge are skinny! Blast.
Instead I'll mention my surprise, when researching this film afterwards, to find it listed as a thriller. Sure it's thrilling to watch Mark Wahlberg's lips slowly turn blue, which I choose to believe was not due to the intense weight loss but rather was a metaphor for what the audience was suffering through. And I suppose it was thrilling to watch the absurdly edited climax which, if you know Los Angeles, has our anemic antihero running in circles through Downtown Los Angeles up to USC to get to Koreatown. Will he ever make it to his predictable and sentimental final destination, I'm dying to know!!
In the end no one is serviced by this film, least of all Jessica Lange, whose years of bold, horrifying choices in AHS seemed laughably out of place here. God bless Jessica though, at least she was awake throughout her scenes, which is more than I can say for the rest of the cast.
I won't mention that if you had only this film to guide you, you might honestly believe that every person of color was either playing basketball or sitting in perfectly crossed shadows somewhere orchestrating your downfall. Unless of course it's your Korean gambling lord, in which case he's orchestrating your downfall from his well lit Korean nail salon slash gambling syndicate. Clearly it's a White Man's world and the other 64% of us are just living in it.
I also won't mention the dramatic and unnecessary weight loss that leaves our beloved Marky Mark pallid and grey and which, if it weren't so distracting, would at best be a mildly interesting character choice but instead reeks of egocentrism and Oscar baiting. I know I know, English-professors-on-the-verge are skinny! Blast.
Instead I'll mention my surprise, when researching this film afterwards, to find it listed as a thriller. Sure it's thrilling to watch Mark Wahlberg's lips slowly turn blue, which I choose to believe was not due to the intense weight loss but rather was a metaphor for what the audience was suffering through. And I suppose it was thrilling to watch the absurdly edited climax which, if you know Los Angeles, has our anemic antihero running in circles through Downtown Los Angeles up to USC to get to Koreatown. Will he ever make it to his predictable and sentimental final destination, I'm dying to know!!
In the end no one is serviced by this film, least of all Jessica Lange, whose years of bold, horrifying choices in AHS seemed laughably out of place here. God bless Jessica though, at least she was awake throughout her scenes, which is more than I can say for the rest of the cast.
