So, I know J-Man has already reviewed Gone, but I've decided I'm going to post a lot more reviews this year as well. I mean, my posts can't be strictly rants all the time, can they? Though don't be surprised if my reviews end up being rants, but hey...what are you going to do?
So, went and saw Gone this week, not a movie I was particularly dying to see. However, it had Amanda Seyfried in it, who is easy on the eyes. Well, she's more than easy on the eyes, now. She actually carries the movie and I gotta say, this young lady deserves some credit for her movies. Now, before I begin, let me say I did a little research of Amanda Seyfried on Rotten Tomatoes, where critics go to throw out their proverbial chests and prove over and over again that if there's a war, they should be the first ones thrown into the front of the line, without any weapons to defend themselves. They should be given the flags like those guys you see in old movies, y'know, the ones who get shot first because they have A FLAG to defend themselves with and not a gun. Anyhow Rotten Tomatoes has shown that over Amanda Seyfried's career, she has only been in 2, count'em 2 movies rated "fresh" -- Mean Girls and some movie called Nine Lives that made 10 cents at the box office.
Now...really? I mean, I wasn't a big fan of Mamma Mia, Jennifer's Body looked kinda eh, Dear John looked like drivel, Letters to Juliet WAS drivel, and Red Riding Hood looked meh. However, Chloe looked somewhat interesting and In Time was actually pretty damned good. Oh, and the lowest rated movie of her career?
Gone.
Wow. Look, it didn't look like any hell in the trailers, but when I saw this movie the theatre and gave it a chance, you know what? It's pretty good! Yes, it's a genre flick and it's not going to be innovative, the concept is not new and it's not going to win any Oscars, probably. However, not every film is meant to be best picture, which I think is a point everyone misses. Gone may be a genre flick, but it's probably one of the best of its genre. The reason is a) Amanda Seyfried has real screen presence and b) they're smart by playing on the character's strength instead of weakness. Most movies like this, the main character flails from one situation to the other, reacting to events around her rather than being the driving force of the plot. Amanda Seyfried's character in this is no victim, which you may think from the trailers...she is a tough-as-nails, take no prisoners girl who stays one step ahead of the police while following the trail of clues logically to the climax.
I also like that the bad guy in this movie was just a guy. Not a main character in the movie, not someone close to her who is secretly behind it, it's just a guy. I remember a movie called January Man, at the end, they find the serial killer and Harvey Keitel says "who is he" and Kevin Kline says "nobody. That's the problem. He's just a guy." I like that. I like that "it's just a guy, just some normal everyday guy who kidnaps and kills girls because." There's too many movies where you have to go into some deep psychological hole in order to understand the motives of the killer, because I guess we feel if we have a handle on the killer, we have some control over them. It's better if it's just a guy killing and you don't know why -- that's true horror because you don't understand the motivations, it makes things a lot less predictable.
So in the end, this was a pretty good movie, as J-Man said. I will definitely be picking this one up on DVD and if you don't want to pay full price to see it, then fine, but check it out through home video, because if you don't, you'll be missing out.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.
- Stephenstein
No comments:
Post a Comment