**Contains one mild 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**
This is in my all time top 5. On the surface it's an action movie, but it's really a puzzle. In fact, 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. It' an action movie with a lot of meat on it. Perfect casting, an ironclad story, lots of off-hand/dark humor, and an important theme 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. I personally think she's hot, and she's shown that she has real talent like in
Up in the Air, 50/50, and
End of Watch as well as this. She's the catalyst to the only two scenes in the movie where Wolff gets truly excited about something. The lunch scene is exquisite, as is the one on the couch where Wolff says, "I have difficulty socializing
with people...but I want to", followed by a hilarious segue that's so jolting, people don't realize the humor until after it's long gone. Everyone is as stunned (Huh!) as Kendrick's character.
The most important piece of this puzzle is a painting. Two are used in the story, a Renoir, and one of Jackson Pollock's cynical abstract abominations (in my never to be humble opinion) which a little research revealed was titled "Free Form". But in the movie it's been altered with an addition which jumped out at me for the 3 seconds they show it on screen (hard to see it on a TV). It isn't in the original (though for the characters it is), and it changes everything. I feel sure the technique is a first for Hollywood. The painting hearkens to a line from the song at the end, "I can get through the wall if you give me a door." To the solid red, white and black "noise" of the original, an eye (of an autistic?) is added at the center. It's probably the harshest form of criticism, to show what Pollock could/should have done if he had had talent, and do it for him. See my "free hand" rendition of the amended junk come masterpiece below.
Wolff's mentor in prison tells him to find just one person he can trust. But he actually three. There are several reveals and twists, but the story behind the SIRI (Wolff's virtual personal assistant) is a real kicker.
Check out the extensive and mostly interesting trivia on IMDb:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2140479/trivia?ref_=tt_ql_trv_1
I agree with the public on this one which gives it high ratings as opposed to the critics who don't, for reasons I can't fathom. When there's a split, I'm usually on their side. I don't think they have the time this movie requires. This is the director's (Gavin O'Connor's) second major film, after "Warrior", which was only OK, but this is a masterpiece, and my most re-watchable movie ever. 10/10
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