I cannot imagine why someone of Hilary Swank’s stature signed on to something this dreadful.
This isn’t merely a bad film; it’s also badly made. Bizarre camera placement. (Who frames a two-shot so that half of one person is cut off?) Wildly inappropriate choices of music, at bewilderingly wrong moments. Frequent night-time and deserted building set-ups so poorly illuminated that it’s impossible to tell what’s happening.
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| After her son is killed in what appears to be a drug deal gone bad, Marissa (Hilary Swank, right) reluctantly teams up with his pregnant girlfriend Paige (Olivia Cooke), in order to figure out what actually went down. |
Somebody should rip up Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s Directors Guild card; he shouldn’t be let near another film shoot. But his feeble efforts at helming this misfire pale when compared to the script he co-wrote with Madison Harrison: absolutely the most ridiculous, atrociously contrived bit of nonsense I’ve seen in years.
None of these characters feels genuine. Not even Swank can breathe life into her starring role. The so-called plot lurches forward only because every key character behaves like an imbecile at all times.
The result is nothing but a string of “jump the shark” moments. On top of which, the plot’s supposed “surprise reveal” is blindingly obvious from the start.
Marissa (Swank) is a newspaper journalist in Albany, NY, whose career has stalled in the wake of her husband’s death a few years back. (One wonders why she continues to mourn, given that she later admits he was an abusive jerk: merely one of many details this misbegotten script can’t justify.) As the film begins, she’s shattered by the news that her estranged younger son — Michael (Harrison, in a fleeting acting cameo), a drug addict — has just been shot dead.
This comes as no real surprise to Marisa’s other son, Toby (Jack Reynor), a police officer who has been tracking the local distribution of fentanyl-laced heroin, and believes that Michael and longtime friend Ducky (Hopper Penn) were involved. When Michael’s seven-months-pregnant girlfriend Paige (Olivia Cooke) shows up at the funeral, Marissa loses control, believing her to be the “bad influence” in Michael’s life.
The two women subsequently reach an uneasy alliance — a moment that neither actress can sell — when Paige insists that Ducky couldn’t possibly have killed his best friend; it simply doesn’t make sense.
That evening, Paige goes through Michael’s things and finds a suitcase containing two large baggies of heroin. Just as she’s absorbing the implications, two men break into her apartment; she barely escapes with the suitcase. With nowhere else to go, Paige shows up at Marissa’s house, first hiding the suitcase in the front porch crawlspace; she removes oneof the bags (!) and hands it to Marissa and Toby.
To Toby’s obvious concern, the two women decide to play Nancy Drew, in order to a) find Ducky; b) determine if he did or didn’t kill Michael; c) find possible witnesses to the young man’s slaying; and d) figure out who broke into Paige’s place.
All while everybody mostly ignores the elephant in the room: Marissa’s return slide into alcoholism. (We cringe every time she gets behind the wheel of a car.)
Sidebar angst involves the struggle Toby and his wife, Gina (Dilone), have while trying to conceive a child. Dilone delivers the film’s only credible performance; she makes Gina warm, compassionate and persuasively fragile.
Paige is alternately savvy — thanks to a clever use of social media — and bone-stupid, the latter climaxing during a scene so false that it’s almost laughable. (I’ll get to “laughable” in the next paragraph.) It’s simply impossible to imagine a street-smart young woman being as foolish as this idiot script demands.
The height of absurdity actually comes later, when Marissa tails a suspect — first by car, then on foot, and then in a train — while carrying a newborn baby in a hamper.
Who writes nonsense like that?
Joris-Peyrafitte and Harrison, obviously.
Ludicrous as that is, this film’s penultimate scene — between Marissa and two other characters — is even worse: a preposterous finale by hack writers who clearly don’t know the first thing about human nature.
Swank’s one-note performance is a relentless parade of grim, glum and gloomy. I suspect we’re to assume that Marissa is beaten down by grief and depression, but since her superficial conversations never stray into deep emotional territory, it’s difficult to be sure. The result is tiresome. Swank, an actress capable of terrific range, is ill-used here. It’s as if she couldn’t be bothered to flesh out her role (and, given the script in hand, who could blame her?).
Norm Lewis pops up as Marissa’s editor, just long enough to tell her “You’re my best writer.” (Lewis isn’t terribly convincing.) This makes us wonder why — in this age of newspaper downsizing — he has kept her on the payroll for so long, since the lingering depression has prevented her from writing a single sentence, let alone a breaking story.
As must be clear by now, this misbegotten script can’t get anything right.
You’ve been warned.
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