An excellent social commentary on today's relationships....

Rating: 9/10 (11 January 2014)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has already proved he's one of the most talented actors in Hollywood right now. With Don Jon, he's setting out to prove he's just as good at writing and directing, with this being his directorial debut. By choosing to make a movie about porn addiction, he picked a pretty risky subject to centre his first film on but he pulls it off perfectly, giving us a vision of what will hopefully be an outstanding directorial career for JGL.
Don Jon features an incredibly original story written by JGL, that has a lot more to it than is alluded to in the trailers. It's more than your average rom-com; it's intelligently written and has some great social commentary on relationships in today's society. The characters are extremely well developed, and a lot of them took unexpected turns. In fact, the whole last third of the movie took a very unexpected turn, because although the trailers show a lot of the major events of the first part of the movie, none of this last third is shown so it completely comes up out of nowhere. I'm sure there are many people who won't like this surprise but I thought it was great, and something that many movies today wouldn't dare to do. Even though the trailers show a lot, it still feels fresh and unique whilst watching, which is really a testament to JGL's great skill. If I had to pick a negative, it would be that the film seems to end very abruptly. I was really enjoying it, wondering where it would go next but then it was suddenly over. I don't think it was necessarily a bad place to end, it was just very unexpected.
The acting is outstanding, it's a shame that this years Oscar race is already so crowded because there are some award-worthy performances here that probably won't get recognition. JGL hits it out of the park as he always does, never failing to impress. I was very surprised by Scarlett Johansson, in the past I've always thought she was just good, but in Don Jon she's excellent. Another noteworthy mention is Brie Larson, who has about three lines of dialogue in the whole film but still impressed me, she does a great job just using facial expressions and is often very funny.
I've already said how JGL does an excellent job writing and acting, but that would mean nothing if he wasn't able to get the directing right. That's not the case though, as he does a phenomenal job directing. The soundtrack is great, the editing is incredibly sharp and there's some great cinematography. If JGL continues to direct like this (and let's hope he does) then we're in for a treat.