This is a masterpiece, 10/10, in my top 5 all time best movies. Calling this an action movie is like calling Romeo and Juliette a romance novel.
**Contains one spoiler, but it's recommended that you read it anyway before viewing, to enhance your understanding of the story, unless you're an actual art expert.
As is asked during the movie, "Do you like Puzzles?". This is indeed several layers of puzzle. and its tagline as well. This is a puzzle in the form of one of the best action movies in a couple of years. And to emphasize the point, the autistic-savant main character, Chris Wolff (Affleck), is shown at the start as a child putting together a jigsaw puzzle as fast as he can lay them down, backside up! But this is an "action" movie with a lot of meat on it. Perfect casting, an ironclad story, lots of off-hand/dark humor, and an important message that's handled perfectly instead of presenting it as a cause.
Some people don't like Anna Kendrick in this part, but if opposites attract, she's the outgoing spark that matches his autism. She's the catalyst in the only two scenes in the movie where Wolff gets truly excited about something. The lunch scene is also exquisite, as is the one on the couch where Wolff delivers the lines, "I have difficulty socializing with people...but I want to", soon followed by the most jolting segue ever, "Crazy Eddie and the Panama Pump!" I mean c'mon, he could have waited 30 minutes. Their roles here don't seem especially demanding, but a good part of that is that good actors make it look easy.
The most important puzzle in this set of puzzlea is a painting. Two are used in the story, a Renoir, and one of Jackson Pollock's cynical abstract abominations, which a little research revealed was titled "Free Form" (1946), and which is estimated to be worth $100 mil. But the one in the movie has a small alteration, the profile of an eye looking askance from the center of the surface, which jumps out at you for the 3 seconds they show it on screen. (It's hard to see on TVs.) But it isn't in Pollock's original, and it changes everything. It hearkens to a line from the song at the end, "I can get through the wall if you give me a door." And instead of being merely red, white and black noise, the eye (of an autistic?) is added at the center of that noise. It's probably the harshest form of criticism, to show what Pollock could/should have done, and do it for him. I think this hidden-in-plain-sight clue/statement must be the first of its kind in a film--especially since only an art expert would recognize that it was an alteration and thus the reason it was used--for art criticism and to enhance the plot.
Wolff's mentor in prison tells him to find just one person he can trust. But he finds three. There are several reveals, but the story behind the SIRI (Wolff's seemingly artificially intelligent personal assistant) is a real kicker.
I agree with the public on this one which gives it a high rating as opposed to the critics who don't, apparently because this movie takes more time, effort and viewings, to truly get to the bottom of it and appreciate it. It's one of my most re-watchable movies ever, I even saw it over a dozen times in the theater.
Even product placement, which isn't necessarily bad if it's honest, is interesting, well deployed, and some probably weren't even paid. Examples:
An Ammoland Osprey "silencer" which actually suppresses the noise better than the one which brand isn't shown; the water cooled desktop Corsair computer shown at the end, which could "backdoor the Pentagon"; and my favorite, the clue that ties things up at the end, the dented Stanley wide-mouth bottle, with the easy to remove Stanley label missing, and which is referred to as a "thermos". That had to be one of the unpaid examples.
This is the director's (Gavin O'Connor's) second major film, after "Warrior", which was only OK, but this, as I mentioned, is a masterpiece, in my never-to-be-humble opinion.
**Contains one spoiler, but it's recommended that you read it anyway before viewing, to enhance your understanding of the story, unless you're an actual art expert.
As is asked during the movie, "Do you like Puzzles?". This is indeed several layers of puzzle. and its tagline as well. This is a puzzle in the form of one of the best action movies in a couple of years. And to emphasize the point, the autistic-savant main character, Chris Wolff (Affleck), is shown at the start as a child putting together a jigsaw puzzle as fast as he can lay them down, backside up! But this is an "action" movie with a lot of meat on it. Perfect casting, an ironclad story, lots of off-hand/dark humor, and an important message that's handled perfectly instead of presenting it as a cause.
Some people don't like Anna Kendrick in this part, but if opposites attract, she's the outgoing spark that matches his autism. She's the catalyst in the only two scenes in the movie where Wolff gets truly excited about something. The lunch scene is also exquisite, as is the one on the couch where Wolff delivers the lines, "I have difficulty socializing with people...but I want to", soon followed by the most jolting segue ever, "Crazy Eddie and the Panama Pump!" I mean c'mon, he could have waited 30 minutes. Their roles here don't seem especially demanding, but a good part of that is that good actors make it look easy.
The most important puzzle in this set of puzzlea is a painting. Two are used in the story, a Renoir, and one of Jackson Pollock's cynical abstract abominations, which a little research revealed was titled "Free Form" (1946), and which is estimated to be worth $100 mil. But the one in the movie has a small alteration, the profile of an eye looking askance from the center of the surface, which jumps out at you for the 3 seconds they show it on screen. (It's hard to see on TVs.) But it isn't in Pollock's original, and it changes everything. It hearkens to a line from the song at the end, "I can get through the wall if you give me a door." And instead of being merely red, white and black noise, the eye (of an autistic?) is added at the center of that noise. It's probably the harshest form of criticism, to show what Pollock could/should have done, and do it for him. I think this hidden-in-plain-sight clue/statement must be the first of its kind in a film--especially since only an art expert would recognize that it was an alteration and thus the reason it was used--for art criticism and to enhance the plot.
Wolff's mentor in prison tells him to find just one person he can trust. But he finds three. There are several reveals, but the story behind the SIRI (Wolff's seemingly artificially intelligent personal assistant) is a real kicker.
I agree with the public on this one which gives it a high rating as opposed to the critics who don't, apparently because this movie takes more time, effort and viewings, to truly get to the bottom of it and appreciate it. It's one of my most re-watchable movies ever, I even saw it over a dozen times in the theater.
Even product placement, which isn't necessarily bad if it's honest, is interesting, well deployed, and some probably weren't even paid. Examples:
An Ammoland Osprey "silencer" which actually suppresses the noise better than the one which brand isn't shown; the water cooled desktop Corsair computer shown at the end, which could "backdoor the Pentagon"; and my favorite, the clue that ties things up at the end, the dented Stanley wide-mouth bottle, with the easy to remove Stanley label missing, and which is referred to as a "thermos". That had to be one of the unpaid examples.
This is the director's (Gavin O'Connor's) second major film, after "Warrior", which was only OK, but this, as I mentioned, is a masterpiece, in my never-to-be-humble opinion.