Thriller

Source Code

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Source Code
  • IMDB: link

source-code-posterGroundhog Day meets Twelve Monkeys in this new tale of time travel and alternate realites from director Duncan Jones (Moon) and screenwriter Ben Ripley (Species: The Awakening).

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Colter Stevens, a soldier who awakes in the body of a complete stranger eight minutes before the commuter train he’s riding is set to explode. Over the course of the film he will be slingshot back and forth from his reality, a small one-man pod set at an indeterminate time in the future, back into the train reliving these events over and over again.

While in the present his only contact will be with his command officers (Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright) via cam. They won’t answer his questions. They only want his help. The bomber who blew up the train will attempt detonate an even larger bomb somewhere in downtown Chicago unless Stevens can identify him and give them the information need to stop him.

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The Next Three Days

/ / Home Video
  • Title: The Next Three Days
  • IMDB: link

How far would you go for the person you love? That’s the central question at the heart of writer/director Paul Haggis‘ dramatic thriller The Next Three Days.

After his wife (Elizabeth Banks) is incarcerated for a murder she didn’t commit, and every legal option is exhausted, John Brennan (Russell Crowe) decides to take the only choice left. He begins planning to break his wife out of prison and flee the country with their young son (Ty Simpkins).

Haggis delivers a compelling thriller filled with hard choices as John finds himself going further and further down the rabbit hole. The film is scattered with an assortment of strong supporting roles (Olivia Wilde, Jason Beghe, Liam Neeson, Aisha Hinds, Brian Dennehy), but the weight of the story falls entirely on Crowe’s shoulders and, not surprisingly, he delivers.

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Unknown

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Unknown
  • IMDB: link

unknown-posterLiam Neeson stars as Dr. Martin Harris, a scientist from the United States who arrives in Germany with his wife (January Jones) for a medical conference, only to find his very life stolen from him in the space of four days.

After a car accident leaves him in a coma, Martin awakes days later to find his life has been Taken away from him and an another man (Aidan Quinn) has assumed his identity. Frantic, Martin tries to piece together his fractured memory with the help of a cab driver (Diane Kruger) and a former East German spy (Bruno Ganz).

The film was based on the novel by Didier Van Cauwelaert, but could have just as easily been pieced together from a variety of recent Hollywood thrillers. There’s nothing new added to the equation, and the execution is far from thrilling.

That’s not to say Unknown is a bad film. It hits the right marks, the action sequences are passable, and the movie does include one fairly well done car chase through the streets of Berlin.

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Rabbit Hole

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Rabbit Hole
  • IMDB: link

Is there anything worse than the loss of a child? Adapted from his play, writer David Lindsay-Abaire gives us the tale of a couple struggling with the death of their young son Danny (Phoenix List) eight months after his death.

On the outside the lives of Howie (Aaron Eckhart) and Becca (Nicole Kidman) seem normal enough. But we can tell something is wrong. We slowly realize there is a missing member of this family whose absence is not only felt in every frame but is slowly destroying the couple from within.

For 90 minutes we follow Howie and Becca through their pain, various coping techniques, and watch each of them struggle with their inability to move beyond such a devastating loss. Director John Cameron Mitchell‘s film is not a fun hour-and-a-half by any means. This version of Lindsay-Abaire’s play is full of raw emotion just under (and often boiling over) the surface.

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All Good Things

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: All Good Things
  • IMDB: link

Although the film is based on the real events surrounding the life of Robert Durst, the main problem with the screenplay by Marcus Hinchey and Marc Smerling is how ridiculous the events appear when recreated on film.

What starts as a love story and tense drama about a troubled son of a real estate broker devolves into a thriller. Then the thriller turns into the kind of cinematic disaster nobody wants on their resume. All Good Things may be based on a real story but it plays like bad fiction.

There’s something off about David Marks (Ryan Gosling) the first time we meet him, but that’s not enough to stop the charming Katie (Kirsten Dunst) from falling for him. Needled by his father’s (Frank Langella) disapproval David and Katie leave the tranquil health food store in Vermont so David can act as the bagman for the family business collecting cash from various seedy Times Square enterprises which the Marks famly owns.

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