Disappointing

Rating: 1/10 (23 April 2015)

All reviews are subjective but I think it applies with especial force to this movie, and I can see why opinions are so polarised. If you are happy to leave your brain at the door and go along with the roller-coaster ride then you're in the right hands - a very skilled director and script writer, good actors and no expense spared in production. Start looking at the plot holes and the whole experience becomes risible - even for a thriller this one is totally over the top. That said, there are a number of specific reasons why I found this movie beyond annoying. One is the absence of emotional engagement on the part of the cast, because disengagement is part of the character of the two protagonists. The result is that the viewer looks forward to the appearance of the secondary characters, like Affleck's sister and the detective, simply because they offer a minimal amount of emotional input. A second issue is the long recapitulation of events narrated by Pike about a third of the way into the movie, which is basically telling viewers they've been fooled and stalls the action for, what, about ten minutes? Also incredible is the idea that a woman capable of such intricate and sustained planning could be hoodwinked by the trailer park villains - it was pure plot device. I could go on. Suffice it to say that this is the cinematic equivalent of a page turner, superficial in the extreme and really disappointing for fans of the director's movies.