My movie this week was something I had never heard of, and honestly had a hard time finding a way to watch, as it was originally released as Butterfly on a Wheel (2007) in Canada and the UK, and that was the title in which it appeared on our monthly draft board. However, in the US, its title was changed to Shattered (2007). 

I am going to do the opposite of what this movie did to me, and come out the gate telling you that it has a twist ending. Sorry for the spoiler. The plot revolves around Niel (Gerard Butler) and his wife Abby (Maria Bello) getting “kidnapped” by Tom (Pierce Brosnan) and having to do everything he says for the next 24 hours. This includes some ridiculous escapades such as making them withdraw all of their cash from the bank ($140,000 or so) and then burning it and throwing it off a bridge… 

The movie just sort of starts, it shows a little bit about the life that Niel and Abby have built together, maybe for five minutes of run time, if that, then all of a sudden Tom is in the back of their car holding a gun to their heads. At every turn of the movie, the plot gets more and more ridiculous, and this is in no way helped by the way this movie is shot. The scene of Tom burning the money and throwing it out of the door of their SUV was giving me a headache. I am not one that is prone to motion sickness from movies or boats or theme park rides, but some of the scenes were just so poorly done and “intensified” with the camera that it not only took me out of the movie, but it genuinely made me want to look away from the screen. Later in the movie, there was a scene where they (Niel and Abby) were having an intense conversation on the street and the camera was 360 circling around them at a fast pace, attempting to create a dramatic effect on the scene, and again, all it did was pull me out of the movie at how ridiculous it was. 

The acting in this movie was subpar to say the least. This is the first Gerard Butler movie I have seen in a long time, and to see him playing a non-action star role and being kind of a pansy was not believable by any means. Abby was annoying and kind of shrill also. I was curious because the actor that played Abby looked sort of familiar, and the only other movie I have seen that she is in is The Cooler (2003) which is a movie that my girlfriend, roommate, and I turned off less than halfway through.

Anyways, back to the reason we’re all here, to read a review of a movie that I wish I hadn’t watched and that I won’t recommend that you watch. As I mentioned earlier, this movie does have a twist. Eventually, Tom takes Niel to a random house and says there is someone inside who Niel must murder within 10 minutes or else he will kill Niel’s daughter. Niel goes into the house, and the person waiting inside is Niel’s receptionist from work, who also happens to be Tom’s wife.

WHAT A TWIST!!!!!!!!!!! Turns out the entire movie, Abby and Tom have been working together to fuck with Niel. The gun that Tom hands Niel for the aforementioned murder is empty. Niel leaves the house, and gets in the car with Abby and drives her home. Thinking that he can lie his way out of this to Abby. Abby then reveals that she’s known for a while and was working with Tom. And then the movie ends.

I was feeling a little torn on my overall rating for Shattered because the twist ending did make for a more interesting overall story. However, as Maxwell and I agreed when texting about this movie, a ‘good’ twist ending is when you have some inkling of what may be coming and why it may be coming. The fact that this felt so out of left field and unearned did not sit well with me. There are zero hints throughout the entire film that Abby is actually Niel’s adversary as well. 

I think a big part of why I disliked this movie as much as I did also was that I just couldn’t care about any of the characters or their reason for being characters in a major movie production. You know how sometimes a character is on screen for less than 20 minutes in total (looking at you Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy in all EIGHT Harry Potter films. Yes, he has a total runtime of less than 20 minutes across all the films), and sometimes a character can be in every single scene, and you find yourself asking why they matter? That was me with this movie and all three characters, up until the twist ending. Then I found myself with a sliver of caring for Tom, and subsequently Abby. But again, the twist ending was so forced and quick that it ultimately didn’t change my mind on the movie as a whole.

Overall, I think the journey to the end of this one is not worth the ride. 95 minutes of seemingly random sequences of Tom assaulting both Abby and Niel, playing games with them psychologically and mediocre action sequences to have a shoe-horned ending that barely feels like it has a chance to get a resolution. If you’re looking for a crime/thriller/drama movie to watch at home, there are probably half a million better ways to spend 90 minutes of your evening. 

-0.5 mallards /5

-Seann

Last Vegas (2013) is, oddly, a film that I’ve never heard of before, even in passing. Why is this odd? Well, the stars of the film are friend of the blog Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Kline. That’s a pretty good list of some of the most respected and storied actors still working today. This film, as the title would imply, is a light-hearted story about four lifelong friends who go on a trip to Las Vegas while they’re in their 60’s. The potential for cringe-inducing geriatric jokes and cliché Las Vegas moments is glaringly obvious.

I gotta say, they managed to avoid the absolute catastrophe that this movie could have become, luckily for the audience. There are a few moments of forced boomer humor that sit pretty awkwardly today (if they didn’t back in 2013), most of them oddly delivered by Mr. Kline. The acting, unsurprisingly, is superb. Each gentleman (and I can’t leave out the leading lady, Mary Steenburgen) provides an exacting and believable performance of their character. Each of them represent a trope or an archetype of someone approaching old age: a nervous man whose relationship with his long-term partner has gone cold, a stroke victim whose son is overprotective and babying, a recently widowed man who is bitter and lonely, and an affluent skirt-chaser trying to convince the world that he is still youthful. Again, these stereotypes can become really tired (no pun intended) really quickly, but they manage to avoid this.

I think the biggest positive for this movie is, due to the reasons above, the script. There is a vast amount of pitfalls that this movie could fall into, and it does come close a couple times, but always seems to hold on to the ledge without falling to its doom. A line here or there could be adjusted to be less groan-inducing, but overall this movie was rather unpredictable. The most awkward scenes involve the aforementioned Kline, who is on a quest to stoke his fire (and reminds everyone constantly, both friend and stranger, that he has a condom with him), as well as the first scene where we meet the Mary Steenburgen character. The latter of these really drags and goes on for an inordinate amount of time, with no real purpose. It kind of soured the next ten or fifteen minutes of the film until I forgot about it. Isn’t it crazy how one bad scene can change the feeling of an entire film? Fascinating.

Additionally the movie avoids the Hallmark-ification danger, while still managing to be emotionally poignant. It is easy, again, to have a melodramatic, sappy, saccharine conclusion to the whole thing that leaves it forgettable and unremarkable. The creators side-step this, again, through some witty dialogue, and not harping for too long on the emotional epiphanies of the characters. In the end, of course, each person either finds what they were looking for or realizes that they actually had it all along, but it’s not really in the way you would expect (again with the exception of Mr. Kline’s character).

While this movie is worthy of praise for avoiding the calamity it could have been, that’s not to say that it’s perfect – it’s not by a long shot. There’s probably twenty minutes of runtime of this movie that is just establishing shots. These are just quickly cut moving images of the location where the scene takes place. When the events happen at a pool, we’re treated to a thirty second compilation of women in bathing suits at the pool, cocktails being made and poured, people dancing, etc. Is all of that really necessary? I don’t want to sound prudish or anything, but I understand we’re in Las Vegas, so I assume there’s going to be things like blackjack tables, roulette wheels, water slides, dance floors, and alcohol. This film often seemed more like a really long advertisement for the city of Las Vegas (with a plot) than it did a movie that happened to be set in Sin City.

One downside, which is not something that should really be noticed and I rarely comment on, is the musical score. It’s truly god awful. Paired with the long establishing shots mentioned above, we’re treated to what honestly sounds like royalty-free dance music. Perhaps the directors of this all-audiences non-artistic film are attempting to adopt some elements of expressionism by playing horrible music to put us inside the mind of these old fogies and what “new” music sounds like to them, but that would be giving them way too much credit. It’s never good when the music in the movie distracts you from the action or content because of how poor the quality of it is, but that happens multiple times in this movie. What’s ironic is that there are two performers in this movie who have significant influence in the music world, those being Redfoo (of LMFAO fame) and 50 Cent.

Another downside, for me personally – this isn’t exactly an artistic film. There are some interesting architectural marvels and set design pieces, but they’re moreso backdrop used to point out how wacky and zany it is that these old people are in a glitzy city for young people. “Wow, look at this modern building, isn’t it crazy? I’m old, so I don’t understand or like this, because buildings should just be boxes.” I could have written parts of this movie. It’s hard for me to knock this movie for this too much, as it was clearly made for the widest audience possible. It cost $28million to make and earned $134million, so it clearly accomplished its goal and overall it was pretty well-done.

Last Vegas (2013) has a, IMDB rating of 6.6 out of 10, a Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer rating of 45% (ouch), and a Letterboxd rating of 2.9 out of 5. It’s hard for me to pinpoint why the Rotten Tomatoes score is so much lower than the others, as the types of people who use Rotten Tomatoes seem to me to be the exact type of people for whom these types of movies are made. My rating is going to be slightly higher than these because, again, I was surprised that they managed to largely avoid the obvious ways that this movie could have been disastrous. It’s not perfect, I would hesitate to even say it was great, but compared to what it could have been, it’s hard for me not to rate it highly.

-3.5 mallards/5

-Maxwell