farkaspal Reviews

Small Crimes (2017)

A story about second chances and those who (don't) deserve them

[7/10 · 7 May 2017]

The background comes in bits and pieces and it takes time to put those pieces together for the viewer, but despite what many other reviews stated, it's a coherent, layered story, and one that leaves you thinking afterwards.

Beneath the upper layer, which is a crime story with good number of twists and characters, there is a story about second chances and lost cases, and the invisible line that separates the two. It's also a story about realizing there are things you can not amend, no matter how hard you try. The protagonist did a lot of awful things in the past, he messed up his own life and that of his family on several accounts. He served his time and he just wants a clean slate. Now, the question raised by the movie is if he did change and become a better man, and more importantly, irrespective of becoming a better man or not, does he really have a second chance in life, or it's just a false hope that he can't let go of. We get some hints throughout the film, that despite his doomed situation, he at least tries to do better, but probably not hard enough, and makes the same mistakes he did before he went to jail. His final and biggest tragedy is that he fails to realize that he reached the point where the world would be a better place without him for all those who are (or should be) important for him. Maybe because he just can't let go of his hope for a second chance, even though it's already lost.

Well acted and sad movie about a lost case.

Get Out (I) (2017)

Grotesque comedy, not horror

[7/10 · 6 May 2017]

While the first half of the film is getting increasingly weird and builds up some really scary scenes like the first hypnotism scene, at around the two-third mark it just starts to become so much absurd and grotesque, that it actually turns increasingly funny and not very much scary any more. The racist clichés are thrown around in a way that they become a rather shallow caricature of racism, and the scene where Rod explains his theory to the police about rich white people abducting black people to make them their brainwashed slaves actually summarizes very well how satyric the whole setup truly is. I couldn't decide how much intentional or not that was, but I liked this change - while it ruins the creepy atmosphere, it makes the movie more than the "average" horror movie.

It's a very much enjoyable, well made movie - it's just not a horror, but a satire.

A Perfect Getaway (2009)

Entertaining thriller with a questionable twist

[7/10 · 30 January 2010]

Just a few thoughts on the main twist of the story. Many reviewers criticize that the twist was completely illogical with the way the characters were presented in the first half of the movie, and the director / screenwriter "lied" to the viewers in order to convince them that Cliff and Cydney are the good guys who suspect any suspicious characters to be the killers. There is no lie, I re-watched the movie, and there is not a single sentence or motive in the first half of the movie that contradicts to the twist i.e. to the real motives of Cliff and Cydney (OK, it can qualify a dirty trick from the screenwriter that they talked about the killers in third person when they had their private discussion before doing that river crossing). So there is no 'lie' in the details or the presentation, it's just that many viewers put together a misleading picture from the pieces they are given. Obviously, other viewers seen through this "trick" early in the film, saw the twist coming from miles away and therefore did not enjoy the movie, which is understandable.

While re-watching the film, it's really clear and coherent, that what Cliff and Cydney are doing in the first third of the film is practicing their new roles, trying to avoid any situation in which their true identities could be revealed, and they are looking for their next victims.

All in all it was an enjoyable film with solid acting from Steve Zahn and Timothy Olyphant, and somewhat surprisingly, from Milla Jovovich.