Sunday 19 May
 
 

The Last Stand

Early in The Last Stand, the small-town sheriff played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "It's my day off. Should be a quiet weekend." That's the new way of saying, "I've got one week to retirement," because it signals — with flashing neon and everything — that life is going to royally upend those plans.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0

Texas Chainsaw

One of the most inconsistent franchises in movie history is the one beget by Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. How does one follow all those less-than-beloved sequels? Lionsgate's latest in the series — the seventh — has a solution: Ignore 'em.
05/17/2013 | Comments 0

Captain America: Collector’s Edition

Not long after Batman changed Hollywood in the summer of 1989, every studio wanted to have the next comics-based blockbuster. I remember visiting Penn Square Mall’s multiplex (as I did often back then) and seeing a poster for Captain America. The one-sheet was comprised of little more than a close-up of Cap’s iconic shield and a promise to arrive next summer.
05/16/2013 | Comments 0

Dark Circles

With the Broken Lizard comedy troupe becoming increasingly broken, member Paul Soter has branched off to write and direct something about as far away as one can get from the likes of Super Troopers and Beerfest: a horror film. Now that I've seen it, I'm thinking maybe he should stay on his own.
05/16/2013 | Comments 0

Die! Die! My Darling!

File 1965's Die! Die! My Darling! under that now-dead subgenre dubbed "Grande Dame Guignol." The Hammer Films production may lack the dueling duo of two twilight-era titans of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and the others, but truth be told, Tallulah Bankhead is fierce enough to provide all the fire it needs.
05/14/2013 | Comments 0
Home · Articles · Movies · Drama · Trust
Drama

Trust


A cautionary tale with too much melodrama

Rod Lott March 30th, 2011  

When your tween daughter asks why she can’t have a Facebook account or a MySpace page, take her to see “Trust.”

In fact, that’s really the only reason I can recommend the family drama: as a cautionary tale about what happens when the social network becomes a sexual one. It should be an “ABC Afterschool Special,” and not playing at theaters starting Friday.

At least it’s well-made. With “Trust,” director David Schwimmer — yes, Ross from TV’s “Friends” — revisits the themes of his previous outing behind the camera, 2007’s “Run, Fatboy, Run” — and, yes, I’m being sarcastic.

Clive Owen (“Duplicity”) and Catherine Keener (“Cyrus”) play loving parents to Annie (newcomer Liana Liberato in a breakthrough role), a model student, but starved for peer attention. When she receives a new MacBook for her 14th birthday, she begins chatting online with a boy in another state who — unbeknownst to her, but certainly not to audiences — is a grown man.

Her naïveté leads her to meet him at the mall. Initially stunned at his middle-agedness, she nonetheless allows herself to be sweet-talked into his car, and things go from bad to worst-case scenario.

That’s when Dad takes action, waging a one-man war against Internet child predators — but not, mind you, in Owen’s “Shoot ’Em Up” mode. (Now that would be something to see.)

This is when Schwimmer slathers on the melodrama, so much that it covers up all goodwill fostered in its first half. Character motives and reactions feel less realistic, and the film switches from narrative to sermon. In iChat lingo, it may not be a CWOT, but you’ll likely be left asking, “AYPI?”

 
  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
 
 

 

 
 
 
Close
Close
Close