Reeks of Hollywood

Rating: 4/10 (1 November 2017)

(Flash Review)
Not that Hollywood is always bad but this is super glossy, has big star power, has an overly engineered story and just feels trite. This movie has several twists, twists that cheat the audience as it doesn't really leave you any clues that you can trace back to earlier scenes; aside from the overarching plot arc which is abandoned for the majority of the movie. The granular twists come out of nowhere and you just have to go along with it, thus they weren't smartly interwoven into the script. And for a film with so many A-List actors, Hartnett is the main actor.Hartnett! and half the time he is wearing a towel and acting overly snarky. I'll give credit to the production crew and the cinematographer as the scenes looked bold and were visually striking however the pacing felt awkward. Overall, this tried to and succeeded in coming off cocky enough to think it outsmarted such classics as The Usual Suspects or SE7EN, for example, without giving you enough charm to care for any of the characters. In the end, I just cleared out some stale movie queue fodder which was only in their because the movie title was unique enough to stick with me from '06.