Great cast, great story, but somethings missing. Lackluster? I only watched half last night and am about finish. Somethings been missing. I'm a little confused by the players. The who's who of the storyline.
sharetotally lacking in realism?
lazy writing?
unbelievable characters?
if those guys were the counter terrorism task force, LA would have been gone by now.
Yeh . . .
I was disappointed ...
Part of the problem is when you have two headliner incredible actresses like Kidman & Roberts you expect top-notch story telling editing, etc, to create the tension, suspense, etc etc etc that would fill out said expectations and there were just so many plot-holes, missing stuff, & uneeded stuff it all just sorta fell flat ...
The flash-back scenes often took too much work for the viewer to keep up with - I got tired of tryin' to look for grey hair, no hair, greasy-unkept hair, AND follow dialogue in order to keep up with Swiss-cheese plots.
I thought the whole terrorist theme coulda been thrown out to build more in other directions such as the relationships Ray-Claire, Ray-Jess, etc, and Seifort coulda just been even more of an
anal-control-brown-noser or somethin' ...
But that still wouldn't have fixed some of the other holes -
One example is; Ray lookin' for Marzin - the SECOND time at the ballpark by standing right in front of bleachers basically announcing
'Here we are - the same guys lookin' for you Marzin!" -
THEN when Ray finally sees Marzin - does he even try to stealthily approach him?
No.
He hollers out continously as he lunges & draws all kinds of attention, announcing his presence to Marzin who has already seen Ray before & naturally takes off running.
That whole stupid chase scene coulda been replaced with something more cohesive -
The scene where Ray sees Jess's daughter in the dumpster - I kinda thought there would be some denial, or double checking to see if it really was her - I mean the girl was face-down & had been ravaged - it coulda been someone that looked a lot like her - but Ray takes one quick look and knows immediately?
AND then almost immediately with zero composure, he walks 15ft back to Jess and tells her without trying to protect or prepare her at all??? Or maybe call in someone else to at least get the girl out and somewhere else so Jess wouldn't have to see her child in a dumpster???
I don't know - that whole scene just doesn't seem like how even a friend would handle that, much less a friend who is also a professional crime-scene investigator . . .
But if there had been more time given to scenes showing their close friendship it might have been more dramatic than the 1 scene & two lines referenced later in the movie ....
. . . and blah-blah-blah
I could go on spotting other 'off' or unrealistic or missing or uneeded moments ...
But I'll just give this movie a 3 out of 10 - the 3 is for a great cast & a couple of good twists.
The missing 5 or 6 points that would make this movie an 8 or a 9 is due to all the bull & cheez ...
Fine, you like exciting mivies, some don't.
I happen to like both, and many other types.
As ling as it is a good story and well done, I'm game.
Was a pretty lackluster movie.
Also just wasn’t cohesive at all. The jumping back and forth between time lines was not done that well.
The ending twist was lackluster as well and considering the movie seemed to be pushing a conspiracy of this guy being allowed to get away with it and being protected, it felt like a lot of plot set up was gone.
I understand it’s a remake which I didn’t know going in. But overall as a film by itself. It’s really not that good.
Man that’s such a put down to Kidman and Roberts!
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