Reviews

This film did such a great job of character development, storyline, and back story. I was really feeling it...and then there was the final ten minutes. It was like they just gave up and sought to wind everything up as quickly as possible with no resolution. I have so many questions. I don't understand how you could put so much effort into a film just to do that. Why the final scene in the prison? What happened to the guy in the basement? The cop? What happened to Maya? Why did Matt Damon give up on trying to act at the end of a film? Jeez! I have no words to describe my disappointment!

There are no answers, only choices! Great acting, lots of plot holes buta great story poorly told. Great to see Yuri dies though!

This movie was great on every level: the acting was top notch, the set was fitting and interesting, and the story was tightly written and executed.

A story based on the futuristic concept of trained "memory detectives" being able to enter another person's memories and offer a independent account of what is there. The twist to this concept is when a young genius hijacks the process to carry out her master plan. While the viewer is given the clues necessary to figure out what they need to know to understand the plot not so much is revealed that it ruins the ending. If you like a clever ending to a clever story that doesn't leave you thinking "what just happened" as so many movies do these days then this is the movie for you.

When this movie was over all I could think was "Is that it?". With a cast including such heavyweights as Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford I thought there would be some real acting involved but it was all so lackluster. Everything was done in such a way as it felt clipped and missing some vital component. It was also a bit clichéd. I mean how often has the 'main actors meets a girl at random who spurns his advances and then starts new job where the same random girl just happens to be working and in spite of her spurning his earlier advances they now get together and have sex every 5 minutes' concept been used? Almost exactly the same thing happened in 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist'. Apart from it being an unrealistic scenario in a city of millions, it is an unnecessary plot element. Overall a very weak movie - weak plot, weak character development, weak character motivations and weak dialog.

If you like movies that have a very weak plot, many pointless scenes, the addition of dream sequences that add nothing to the plot and only confuse, characters that are not explained and which it is therefore very hard to care about, and many shots of the characters looking into the distance with little emotion on their face and seemingly little on their mind then this is the film for you. I don't mind films that are unique and don't fit the usual Hollywood format but there are things that are essential to a good film such as interesting characters, a plot of some sort and some clue as to what is going on being given but those things are missing from this film. I was so confused and mainly just bored throughout this film. I expected better things from Gosling. And I have enjoyed Refn's other films so I am not just a mainstream film lover only but this effort was just bad film making.

For the first half of the film I was hopeful a point would be revealed to all the confusing scenes that never seemed to add anything to a weak story. For example, in one scene Det. Callahan (Steven Dorff) is told by his daughter that she wants to ask him about something that is troubling her. However, instead of actually listening to what she has to say he cuts her off with insistent question after insistent question until she runs off in frustration! OK, so the scene sort of had a point in that it showed the Callahan saw only what he wanted to see, or that his relationship with his daughter was being interfered with by his work, but in the end we never find out what the daughter was trying to ask. I mean it seemed like it was something important being that this daughter who barely said a thing to her father unless it was dismissive of his concern for her, was all of a sudden wanting to ask him something really important and not go to her mother! But we are just left hanging. That's just one small example of how little sense the film made, but the real nonsensical scene was at the end. The captain offers Callahan a pre-written statement that will absolve him of all blame and allow him to carry on with his life in possession of a new moral code forged in the mistakes of the past. Instead of signing the statement though Callahan owns up to the truth of the situation and goes to prison! That just makes no sense! What was achieved by telling the truth?! It wasn't like signing the statement meant he couldn't change his ways. And who in their right mind would knowingly allow themselves to be sentenced to prison? Especially a cop? He may as well have just shot himself in the head and been done with it? Basically none of it made sense and left me feeling rather unsatisfied - kinda like I had just wasted 100 minutes of my life because that's exactly what I had done!

Jeremy Renner was rightfully lauded for his portrayal of Jeffrey Dahmer in this movie about the famous necrofilliac, cannibal serial killer, but like his recent role in latest Jason Bourne film, it was really only his acting that saved the film from being a complete waste of time. I believe that if you are going to tell a story by film then you should do it with the film itself and not with an explanatory text immediately after the opening credits. If it hadn't been for that text then I would have had a seriously deficient picture of what the story of Jeffrey Dahmer consisted of. There was little shown in the way of any legal ramifications, or body disposal, and most importantly the mental state of such a person. How did this person end up with a dead body in his bedroom while he coaxed another potential victim into position? What led him to kill while his parent were out of town? What led him to drink so much and be so angry? Surely it is an essential part of a biopic to show the motivations of the protagonist? I also found it confusing how the position of time constantly changed. I don't have a problem with that happening in a movie per se, but you have to have a reason. I just felt like rather than telling me a story this movie was asking me to fill in too many gaps - gaps that I hadn't effectively been educated by the rest of the story to be able to fill. I would say this movie would really only be recommended for someone who was intimately aware of the Dahmer story because they would have the knowledge to fill in the gaps left by the movie creator, but then that is not really the case because the story is not exactly portrayed accurately. It would be OK to change the story if they were actually communicating the general idea that someone this evil existed but that was not achieved. If we went by the movie we would know that he killed 2 people and got rid of one body - possibly hiding it under his house (but maybe he just hid it there until he could go for a drive at a more respectable hour). So what about the necrofillia? What about the cannibalism? What about the other fifteen victims of Dahmer? What about the military service? What about the neighbors and the grandmother who complained about the strange smells and noises coming from Dahmer's apartment? There is just too much missing from the story to make it effective in any way. The one redeeming feature was the portrayal by Renner of the strange manipulative interplay between killer and victim. He showed with skill how a apparently socially awkward person could still manipulate quite effectively. Apert from that aspect this movie was a failure.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie for the most part. I loved the suspense, the intrigue and the twists. I even loved the part where it all turns out to be a training exercise - or so we thought. If the movie had ended as they were getting into the ambulance at the end it would have been close to a perfect thriller, but to spoil it by adding such a lame and unrealistic ending is a travesty of film making. It slowly dawned on me as the film went on that this was all possibly some sort of elaborate setup to test allegiance of a secret service agent to POTUS. Its a little far fetched maybe, but it could happen (in the USA at least). BUT then for him to go through all of that and then let the location he was not only willing to die for but willing to die painfully and slowly for just slip out at the end was completely ridiculous and ruined everything. And from the terrorist's point of view why would they go through all of that just to set him up for the emotional state he was in on the ambulance ride? The only way this movie can be redeemed is if all copies are immediately recalled and re-edited to cut off the ambulance ride at the end. Until that point it was fantastic. Beyond that point it was a ridiculous farce!

Overall this film was a worthy effort. The concept was an interesting one, dealing with the concept of psychopathy in a juvenile. Some people erroneously think of psychopaths as all evil, yet this was not a mistake made by the creators of this film. The main character, Owen, was portrayed as a kind of child savant possessing a very unique set of skills and the emotional ability to use those skills. Owen was also shown as a member of a family with a dedicated father who lovingly puts Owen to bed and puts a record on for his son like doing so was a treasured bedtime ritual. Therefore, instead of the usual one dimensional, all evil psychopaths, as usually portrayed, we instead had a realistic, multi-dimensional psychopathic character.

The main failing of the film was the slow beginning. I felt that the way the characters were introduced could have followed a different format that did a better job of setting the feeling for the rest of the film. Instead of slow, dialog-heavy scenes there needed to be a bit more action and a better attempt at setting up the family's situation.

Altogether a very enjoyable movie and a fascinating concept that I hope can be expanded upon in more films to come.