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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
UNCERTAINTY Most decisions are pretty boring. Green or blue? Spicy or mild? So it’s hard to imagine how exciting life could get when Kate (Lynn Collins) and Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) flip a coin to decide whether to spend the Fourth of July at home or at a family barbeque. But it turns out any mundane decision can lead to mobsters and melodrama. Scott McGehee and David Siegel—the writing and directing pair behind 2005’s excellent Bee Season—show what happens to Kate and Bobby from both possible outcomes of the coin toss. At Kate’s family’s Brooklyn barbeque, the happy couple copes with problems and prickly relationships, and Kate has a few announcements to make to her parents, including her decisions to become an actress and to keep her baby. On the flipside, the pair goes out for dinner in Manhattan and finds an abandoned cell phone in the backseat of a cab. When Bobby tries to return the phone to its owner, he and Kate become embroiled in all-out gang warfare for the phone, which belongs to the mob. Looking to make a quick buck to cement their future together, Kate and Bobby weigh the pros and cons of blackmailing the mob, and decide to go for it. Decisions, decisions. Gimmicks can be great, but this one gets tired fast. The two plots feel hollow on their own and together seem to contrast without purpose. Rather than build on each other, the stories and characters feel separate. Even the soundtrack is different in each storyline—neither of which is very interesting. Collins and Gordon-Levitt create compelling characters, but McGehee and Siegel didn’t give them a cohesive story to tell on either side of the coin. The tedious dialogue, flat supporting roles, and overly obvious segues between the parallel plots don’t help matters—one glaring example being when Kate and Bobby decide to have sex at a friend’s rooftop party while hiding from the mob. Screwing in plain view of friend and foe seems more like a filmmaker choice rather than a character choice since the Kate and Bobby of the other storyline are conveniently having sex at the same time.
Cinematographer Rain Li’s hand-held digital camera adds a visual style
that almost balances out McGehee and Siegel’s shortcomings. A longtime
collaborator of Christopher Doyle, her camerawork makes the muggy air of
Kate and Bobby’s summer escapade feel real. When fleeing the mob, their
chase scenes through Chinatown’s nooks and crannies are inventive and
cleverly realistic. Natural light floods the frame, and so do the
extras. It’s an old trick to use shaky camerawork in an action movie,
and it works well here too.
Zachary Jones
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