Beautiful Creatures is one of those British crime dramas. You know the ones I'm talking about. Snatch, Layer Cake, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, etc.. Movies that sill hold to the pretense that criminals are smart and sexy and fun to be around. I'm not entirely sure why British crime movies can still get away with that stuff, while American crime dramas seem to have become overwhelmed by the reality that almost all criminals are stupid, unattractive and massively screwed up. Maybe it's the accents.
Anyway, Beautiful Creatures tells the story of Petula (Rachel Weisz) and Dorothy (Susan Lynch), two women brought together by fate who try to navigate their way through murder, lies, betrayal and happenstance. The story starts with Dorothy getting her apartment trashed by her abusive boyfriend. She takes her dog Pluto out to grab a bus and Pluto runs away. Dorothy follows to find Petula getting beaten by her boyfriend. Dorothy clunks him in the head with a 15 foot long metal pipe and knocks him out. They take him back to Dorothy's apartment because Petula won't leave him in the street. But back in the apartment, the guy ends up dying.
It turns out, he was the little brother of Petula's boss, one of those tough as nails, criminal kingpins that populate British crime dramas. He owns a large business but everyone knows he's really a vicious killer and even the cops do him favors. Petula and Dorothy first try to dump the body and when that doesn't work out, they concoct a kidnapping scam to try and get enough money to get away from evil big brother. That brings in a detective inspector who wants a cut of the action and the return of Dorothy's abusive boyfriend, leading to one of those everybody-rushes-to-the-same-place-and-almost-everybody-ends-up-dead sort of endings.
Except for a strange, 5 minute stretch when it morphs into a stalker movie, Beautiful Creatures is a fine movie that sets itself above other British crime dramas in two ways.
1. No one's really that smart. These films usually involve people crafting brilliant, intricate plans that go wrong in complicated ways. This film involves people coming up with desperate plans by the seat of their pants that go wrong because they weren't that well thought out to begin with.
2. It lets its two female leads be normal woman. Female protagonists in crime dramas either start out or evolve into cunning, hard assed rogues who are just as tough and deceitful as any man, usually more so. But Weiz and Lynch are allowed to play characters who are physically weaker than men, who aren't as cruel and violent as the cops or the crooks around them. These are two women in horrible situations, who come together to help each other out and succeed as much by luck as anything else.
One of the other notable things about Beautiful Creatures is that it is probably the film where Rachel Weisz is the most attractive and sexy she's ever been and ever will be in a movie. She's also a platinum blonde, if that trips your trigger.
Though it's not as good a film, Beautiful Creatures could also be ranked alongside The Silence of the Lambs as one of the best, little-f feminist crime dramas that doesn't fall into the big-F Feminist trap of letting its take on sexual and gender politics overpower the story and turn it into "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" propaganda.
Anyway, Beautiful Creatures tells the story of Petula (Rachel Weisz) and Dorothy (Susan Lynch), two women brought together by fate who try to navigate their way through murder, lies, betrayal and happenstance. The story starts with Dorothy getting her apartment trashed by her abusive boyfriend. She takes her dog Pluto out to grab a bus and Pluto runs away. Dorothy follows to find Petula getting beaten by her boyfriend. Dorothy clunks him in the head with a 15 foot long metal pipe and knocks him out. They take him back to Dorothy's apartment because Petula won't leave him in the street. But back in the apartment, the guy ends up dying.
It turns out, he was the little brother of Petula's boss, one of those tough as nails, criminal kingpins that populate British crime dramas. He owns a large business but everyone knows he's really a vicious killer and even the cops do him favors. Petula and Dorothy first try to dump the body and when that doesn't work out, they concoct a kidnapping scam to try and get enough money to get away from evil big brother. That brings in a detective inspector who wants a cut of the action and the return of Dorothy's abusive boyfriend, leading to one of those everybody-rushes-to-the-same-place-and-almost-everybody-ends-up-dead sort of endings.
Except for a strange, 5 minute stretch when it morphs into a stalker movie, Beautiful Creatures is a fine movie that sets itself above other British crime dramas in two ways.
1. No one's really that smart. These films usually involve people crafting brilliant, intricate plans that go wrong in complicated ways. This film involves people coming up with desperate plans by the seat of their pants that go wrong because they weren't that well thought out to begin with.
2. It lets its two female leads be normal woman. Female protagonists in crime dramas either start out or evolve into cunning, hard assed rogues who are just as tough and deceitful as any man, usually more so. But Weiz and Lynch are allowed to play characters who are physically weaker than men, who aren't as cruel and violent as the cops or the crooks around them. These are two women in horrible situations, who come together to help each other out and succeed as much by luck as anything else.
One of the other notable things about Beautiful Creatures is that it is probably the film where Rachel Weisz is the most attractive and sexy she's ever been and ever will be in a movie. She's also a platinum blonde, if that trips your trigger.
Though it's not as good a film, Beautiful Creatures could also be ranked alongside The Silence of the Lambs as one of the best, little-f feminist crime dramas that doesn't fall into the big-F Feminist trap of letting its take on sexual and gender politics overpower the story and turn it into "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" propaganda.