Tangled

The premise of "Tangled" is a promising one. It's the old story of unrequited love in a triangle of friends which leads to madness and violence. Could make for a thrilling movie, but for some reason "Tangled" was made more complex than it should be with its unnecessary flashback-storytelling and its "surprising" twist ending. A traditional approach would have made for a much more natural feel. Also, in the final third of the movie characters start to behave unbelievably, all for the sake of a more shocking "outcome". Leigh Cook and Rhys Meyers do their best to give their characters more credibility, but Shawn Hatosy and his wooden facial expressions make everything worse. "Tangled" is watchable if nothing else is on, but it's neither a good movie, nor a satisfying way to kill time.

While I found this suspense-thriller to be rather mediocre in many ways, I am glad to say this film did manage to keep my attention for its hour and a half or so duration.

'Tangled' was a film I had never heard of before, but rented it on the basis of a decent cast (especially Rachael Leigh Cook) and the fact there was nothing else interesting at the store which I had not seen already. It has a very low budget feel to it, as if this could really have been a made for TV movie. It's basically a fairly typical teen film; light plot, suspect acting in places, and just about entertaining enough. The film in the most part is told in flashbacks and concerns a three way relationship between friends Jenny (Cook), Alan (Rhys-Meyers) and David (Hatosy) as told by David. The film starts with Jenny and David as close friends boardering on lovers, but things take a very different and sinister turn when Alan comes on the scene. The film was very, very similar to the 1995 film 'Fear' starring Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon. In this movie Rhys-Meyers essentially plays Wahlberg's character, Cook plays Witherspoon's character, Estelle Warren plays Alyssa Milano's character and Hatosy plays a similar role to that of Witherspoon's father in Fear, though his character is more jealous than overprotective. This is a little better than 'Fear' though.

There were a number of things I liked about the film. The cinematography was nice, and also varied - both warm and vibrant early in the film and dark and cold when things take a downward turn. The way in which the events are told through flashbacks of different times and using varying amonts of colour, though not particularly original (Usual Suspects, Traffic), does at least make it intersting and a little different from the rest of its market. I also liked the fact that Rachael Leigh Cook for once plays a relitively sexy character, rather than her usual 'cute but slightly dorky' ones which have become her trademark (She's all That, All I Wanna Do, Antitrust, etc). There were a few scenes where the director tries to be a little deeper and metaphorical (e.g. kite scene, sitting on car scene, and the story about the brothers), but I felt these scenes suffered from lack of subtlety, especially the kite scene. Still, I liked the fact he tried them.

I do have a number of critisisms though. Firstly, the plot can be a little slow at times which may not be to everyones tastes. Secondly, while the acting in the most part was OK, there were a few times (e.g. Cook's 'shocked and surprised' face in the first 10 minutes) which left me and the guys I was watching it with chuckling. Also the 'twist' ending is very predictable, and we had the whole second half of the movie figured out within the first twenty minutes. Still, theres at least a sense of contentment when things come together on screen how you predicted them.

Overall this is a mixed bag and not bad for a 1st time directorial effort - a mediocre but interesting suspense thriller which is worth a watch if you see it on TV.

Rating: 6/10

At first, I thought this is a second class movie with horrible acting, scene, script and so on and so on. But, after I watched it, I realized that I judged it too early. It's not as bad as I thought, as the matter in fact, it's not bad at all. It's unexpectedly good.

The cross-cut scene, the premise of thriller and good cinematography are already there when you watched it for 15 minutes. The more you watch it, you just follow what will happen and it may surprise you as it's not like what you expect.

What makes me amazed more is that, after I knew this is the first movie of the director, the script writer and the story writer. For their first experience, yes ... it's amazingly great movies. I hope to see more of their movies in the future. I must congratulate them for this.

I thought this was an extremely well-done suspense mystery that attempts to answer the question: what does a young man do when he's in love with his best friend, only to see someone else move in on her? Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' performance was well beyond convincing, to the point where it felt I was watching actual events transpire before me. Overall, I thought this was a very good story line with some good plot twists. Rachael Leigh Cook and Shawn Hatosy were also well cast. This is the type of film that will generate a lot of things to discuss regarding the plot, antagonists and so far. It might not be Heat (my favorite film), but it's good.

I am a huge fan on Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and he is the reason why I was dying to see this movie. For the amount of money that it cost to buy the DVD, I wasn't too impressed with the movie. The only reason to watch it is b/c of the photography scene. OOOh la la!!