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dj-anon
Reviews
The Betrayed (2008)
Quite awful
*Contains Spoilers*
This is a really bad movie, completely ludicrous with an absolutely delirious script, with impossible characters and pretty stupid situations.
Melissa's character (executed with unimpressive acting) really deserves to die for acting so stupidly, but in order to get the lax thriller going, where puzzles and enigmas are frivolous, the character survives thanks to a hit-man that loves humanity or at least Melissa George.
Apparently the mafia lost some money and wants it back, and Melissa for some reason is the key to get it back, however, unlike more realistic portrayals of organized crime like in The Sopranos, here, the Mafia likes to play CIA, visiting hostages and walking slowly around them while saying some faux-poetic words about death.
Character after character we meet, is utterly risible for being a complete caricature impossible in real life, but I'd bet persons that have been prisoners for real, wished their kidnappers were as dumb and slow in their movements.
Awfully predictable, it is obvious way before the first half of the movie, that the writers will bend the laws of physics and time in order for Melissa George to survive and will only spoil her efforts in order the make the film a tad longer or add more fake suspense.
Needless to say, you'll have to turn off your brain if you want a shot at enjoying this film.
Kiss Me Again (2006)
They should have known better...
--BE WARNED, HEAVY SPOILERS--
The film presents us Julian, a college teacher with an existential predicament, where under the mask of a good, open-minded citizen, that sustains an almost perfect relationship with the nicest and most beautiful woman you've ever met; underneath, there is actually a man that has conflicts with rules and the establishment, as we can see at the beginning of the film where he provocatively burns a flag to stimulate student's reflexion. He believes, naively and egotistically, that everything can work out if sincerity and commitment is above all.
When he gets involved with a student, at least platonically, both, her wife Chalice and him, react at the lack of spark and wildness on their apparently perfect relationship, especially because of their promiscuous roommate Malika.
That is when you realize how hypocrite Julian is, because only after three years of marriage, he cannot commit and proceeds to question the tradition of monogamy, and double-crosses Chalice to go to the edge by lying to her and introducing his student Elena into the relationship, without telling Chalice that they know each other, that they have feelings for each other and that they are setting her up in order to have a threesome, where no one is supposed to get hurt and where the marriage can stay safe and healthy.
Add to that the bicurious past of Chalice, and you have a melodramatic mess, where you cannot feel for the characters because with every and each decision they take, they work towards their own misery. The sick behaviors and acts of the three protagonists, urges for a rational and introspective ending, where there is little space for redemption, because, after all, the three of them destroyed their lives, based only on the factor that they cannot control their impulses.
Instead, the writers and the director, refuse to learn to admit wrong, by giving us a ludicrous and implausible conclusion, where roses are red and the sky is blue, even when the destructive three-way relationship cannot get any worse. Which brings the question of why they decided to write this specific script and what did they want to make out of it?
As a viewer, it only feels like a waste of time, where we are supposed to sit through the ramblings of unfinished characters of an unfinished story. Why does this film lasts one hour and forty-five minutes? When, from the beginning you just say "they should have known better, the end."
Aside from the strong acting by Winnick towards the end of the movie, in a particular scene, the execution of this film is mostly mediocre; that being photography, directing and anything else, with the particularity of the sterile acting by Jeremy London.