90min/Rated R
Prose (Story): Bart Bromley (Tye Sheridan), a third-shift desk clerk on the autism spectrum who works at a small chain motel, finds himself in over his head and under suspicion when the hidden cameras he's placed in one of the rooms captures not just the privacy of a beautiful woman ... but also her murder.
Don's (Review): Tye Sheridan continues to grow into being one of my favorite actors, here doing an admirable job capturing Bart as a curious and intelligent young man on the autism spectrum whose voyeuristic tendencies land him in hot water - not just with the investigation of the woman murdered at the motel, but also with another, younger woman, closer to his age, who comes to stay soon afterward and whom Bart finds himself intensely attracted to. His performance would help anchor the film ... if this were the well-written, engaging mytery-thriller that writer/director Cristofer was shooting for. Instead we get a thriller with few thrills, and a mystery where the killer is all-too obvious from the start, as the film makes no attempt at any additional characters so that we even have some kind of a suspect pool. Helen Hunt is quietly sympathetic as Bart's put-upon mother, but in truth she's virtually the only genuinely likable character in a cast of either under-developed or just plain unlikable caricatures (Sheridan's Bart can be quite likable, but also at times irritating, as Bart seems much too smart to do some of the dopey things he does). Even John Leguizamo, always so great in everything, is under-used and seems almost bored here, as the cop investigating Bart and the murder. The slight twist at the end redeems things a bit - as does Sheridan's performance - but, sadly, not enough to save the weak and cliched script. 2/5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment