The first hour of this was a really minimal mental hospital movie. Instead of the usual cast of intermingling crazies, you just have one guy. But, like in every mental hospital movie, you are supposed to wonder who is really sane, and who is insane.
It took at least an hour, maybe more, for this film to grab me. I'm sure I would have walked out and seen something else at the multiplex except I was being blocked from my exit by several large women voraciously eating ribs to my left, and a couple of snorers to my right. So I sat.
The first hour is mostly a dialog between the mental patient (Denis Leary) and his young female doctor. Leary is babbling about many things, but within his babblings there is more truth than he knows, or than the audience knows. Like "The Others" and "The Sixth Sense" and "Fight Club", a basic premise changes in the middle of the picture, and all that you thought was true changes.
The movie has a great performance, almost a solo performance, by Denis Leary. He place a variation on the Denis Leary fast-talking wiseguy character, but his perceptions and body language carry the movie. Everyone else is so underplayed, they are not worth mentioning.
This is mostly a one-set movie. It would work as well or better on stage. It's a brave choice for Campbell Scott for his first solo-directed movie. I recently saw Lumet's 12 Angry Men, and Scott is not nearly as adept at portraying claustrophobia as Lumet. But ultimately, the movie is frightening, it's poignant, and it works. But it's also a downer. See it on Christmas Day.
It took at least an hour, maybe more, for this film to grab me. I'm sure I would have walked out and seen something else at the multiplex except I was being blocked from my exit by several large women voraciously eating ribs to my left, and a couple of snorers to my right. So I sat.
The first hour is mostly a dialog between the mental patient (Denis Leary) and his young female doctor. Leary is babbling about many things, but within his babblings there is more truth than he knows, or than the audience knows. Like "The Others" and "The Sixth Sense" and "Fight Club", a basic premise changes in the middle of the picture, and all that you thought was true changes.
The movie has a great performance, almost a solo performance, by Denis Leary. He place a variation on the Denis Leary fast-talking wiseguy character, but his perceptions and body language carry the movie. Everyone else is so underplayed, they are not worth mentioning.
This is mostly a one-set movie. It would work as well or better on stage. It's a brave choice for Campbell Scott for his first solo-directed movie. I recently saw Lumet's 12 Angry Men, and Scott is not nearly as adept at portraying claustrophobia as Lumet. But ultimately, the movie is frightening, it's poignant, and it works. But it's also a downer. See it on Christmas Day.