While I’m a fan of writer/director Neil LaBute, this wasn’t my favorite of his films. It’s certainly entertaining enough, I guess, but it falls into a few too many genre trappings to work completely. One other problem this movie had was a trailer I’d seen a bunch of times that was at least twice as long as it needed to be, and gave away far too much of the film.

Writing: This isn’t a particularly bad script, it just doesn’t avoid some of the obvious trappings of the genre. One of the more interesting aspects to the film is the character played by Sam Jackson, who is an interesting mix of a good guy and a bad guy. He’s VERY gray area. At the start of the film, I was totally on his side, as he constantly corrected the terrible grammar of his kids. As somebody who is also depressed by the total lack of language skills of the up and coming generation, I almost cheered out loud at some of his moments correcting them. All things being equal, he’s a good parent, until his bad traits escalate a situation that causes him to come unglued, then all bets are off. The racial tension of the film is also one of the more uniquely styled parts of the story, and is thankfully one that plays against stereotype, with Jackson being the outright racist.

Production: There’s little to criticize here, as it’s a very solid production. Everything from cinematography to editing and sound design are well done. None of it is standout, overly praise worthy, but it’s all quite well put together. The final act is particularly effective in terms of location and filming technique.

Cast: The real scene stealer in the movie is Sam Jackson, but I guess that shouldn’t come as a major surprise. He plays the conflicting gray areas of the character very well, managing to come off as charming even at the character’s worst. Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington are adequate as the neighbor couple moving into the neighborhood, and setting off Jackson’s character. I suppose the two of them do lack the chemical spark that the characters needed, but they still manage to pull it off pretty well. The great Ron Glass gets to have a couple scenes, but doesn’t get material of particular importance. Generally speaking, a good cast highlighted by Sam Jackson.

Music: Neil LaBute chose brother composers Mychael & Jeff Danna to score this character thriller, which is an easy choice given their combined experience in scoring movies of the genre. Mychael in particular has done plenty of material previously to make working on this film a walk in the park. The two of them delivered a perfectly functional and well styled score, downplaying the dark nature of the material and giving it that moderately gritty tone. Not the greatest score for either of them, but definitely a solid effort.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 9:14 pm and is filed under Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.