Prisoners Movie Review

Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners spends two hours being so good it comes as a bit of a disappointment that the resolution is so utterly conventional. For an investigative thriller it is almost unbelievably contemplative. It’s a movie that is more content to get into the minds of its characters than to dutifully land on action beats at the appropriate moments, although the action does arrive, often ferociously.

Payback Movie Review

First published in The Connecticut College Voice on 12 February 1999

I was immediately dubious of the tag line “Get ready to root for the bad guy” because Mel Gibson plays the supposed bad guy. You have to ask yourself in that situation, “Would the producers risk making Gibson a true-to-form villain?” The answer, of course, is no.

In Brian Helgeland’s directorial debut Payback, Gibson plays Porter, an anti-hero doing bad things according to the law, but doing them to men who are worse than he is. The film opens with a montage of Porter stealing someone’s wallet then running his credit card bills into the sky. He receives a check for $2.98 at a diner, puts down three dollars and takes two pennies from the tip at another table. There’s no question, he’s a regular baddie.

A History of Violence Movie Review

The title of David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence superficially refers to the main character Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen). Alternatively it may refer to the mob men, led by Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris) who come from Philadelphia to drag him back to his old life. Or does Cronenberg, a Canadian raised so close to the United States yet educated from a different historical perspective, have something bigger up his sleeve? Is he thinking of the story in terms of the violent history of the United States – from a violent overthrow of British rule in the 18th century to the invasion of Iraq in 2003? Remember A History of Violence was filmed in 2004 and released the following year.