Written by Bryan Sipe
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper and Judah Lewis
As an investment banker struggles after losing his wife in a tragic car crash, his increasingly confessional series of letters to a vending machine company catch the attention of a customer service rep with whom he forms an unlikely connection.
To follow up his masterpiece in "Dallas Buyers Club" and the wildly disappointing movie "Wild" (pun not intended, I promise), director Jean-Marc Vallée seems to have type-cast himself, in a way, with the types of films he creates. Perhaps he has finally found a style that he feels best expresses himself, or maybe he's just trying to recapture the success of "Dallas Buyers Club", but I feel he is starting to drift away from what made that film great while he tries too hard to keep himself significant.
At it's core, this film is (or could have been) intensely beautiful and heart wrenchingly emotional. It could have created a bond between protagonist and audience that could not be easily broken. After all, anyone that has lived a significant portion of their life has experienced the loss of a loved one in some way.
But instead, we are presented with a convoluted story of a selfish, unforgiving man. And perhaps that is exactly what the writer, director and actor wanted him to be. But I can't help but feel that it fails on so many levels.
The film feels as though it believe it is more clever than it is, elbowing you in the ribs as if to say "You see what I did there?". But in reality, there isn't much to point out. There are no deep metaphors or well constructed character arcs. In fact, it's hard to tell how the main character comes to the end of his journey. It kind of just happens. But about an hour after it should have happened.
Jake Gyllenhaal, while a decent actor, has seemingly been doing everything within his power to get an Oscar nomination. And it's been painfully apparent in every film he's been in since "Nightcrawler" (with the exception of "Everest").
Naomi Watts' role, as much as I love her, served absolutely no purpose other than to be a Macguffin. She disappears for much of the film, and when she is in the scene, you feel a sense of anticipation for everything to finally come together. But it never does.
If I'm honest, the first six paragraphs of this review paint a worse picture than it deserves. It's not a terrible movie. There is just a lot that I had to say regarding the plot. It wasn't terrible. It was just bland. It didn't have the emotional punch to the gut that made "Dallas Buyers Club" so great. And much like "Wild", it didn't appear as though the protagonist knew how to act around people.
I don't know if Vallée is going for something that I just can't comprehend, and if you feel differently than I do, please contact me to discuss it. I would like to see another view of it. But it just felt as though everyone involved in the higher-ups was just trying to hard.
My Rating: 5/10
