Heartless (2009)
Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 2:07 pm
Synopsis:
A movie that suffers from multiple personality disorder.
Review:
Jim Sturgess stars as a photographer with a huge, heart-shaped birthmark on his face. This is a significant enough of a hurdle for him that he has virtually no social life. He stumbles onto what appears to be a gang of reptilian humanoids committing random acts of violence on the streets of London and things go from there. It's hard to say more without spoiling anything. I will say that, in spite of positive critical reviews, I found this a very ho-hum flick. It's not bad, but it's not clever, frightening, insightful, or [insert adjective here] enough to be good.
Is it trying to be a monster flick? A supernatural thriller? A slasher horror? A supernatural romantic drama? An urban action film? A tale of the internal struggle against the self? What in the fuck was the director shooting for ultimately? Any of these? All of them? I couldn't tell because I don't think he could either. But depending what scene you're watching, it could be dominated by any of the genres I mentioned. I shit you not, one part in the middle could be mistaken for a bad Hallmark movie for about 5-10 minutes. This makes it impossible to establish any kind of tone or flow in the story. It's like walking through a house with twenty different rooms and someone had painted each one a bold, starkly different colour. A higher plan was overlooked or forgotten.
Verdict:
I guess it's worth seeing once.
A movie that suffers from multiple personality disorder.
Review:
Jim Sturgess stars as a photographer with a huge, heart-shaped birthmark on his face. This is a significant enough of a hurdle for him that he has virtually no social life. He stumbles onto what appears to be a gang of reptilian humanoids committing random acts of violence on the streets of London and things go from there. It's hard to say more without spoiling anything. I will say that, in spite of positive critical reviews, I found this a very ho-hum flick. It's not bad, but it's not clever, frightening, insightful, or [insert adjective here] enough to be good.
Is it trying to be a monster flick? A supernatural thriller? A slasher horror? A supernatural romantic drama? An urban action film? A tale of the internal struggle against the self? What in the fuck was the director shooting for ultimately? Any of these? All of them? I couldn't tell because I don't think he could either. But depending what scene you're watching, it could be dominated by any of the genres I mentioned. I shit you not, one part in the middle could be mistaken for a bad Hallmark movie for about 5-10 minutes. This makes it impossible to establish any kind of tone or flow in the story. It's like walking through a house with twenty different rooms and someone had painted each one a bold, starkly different colour. A higher plan was overlooked or forgotten.
Verdict:
I guess it's worth seeing once.