![]() Serenity forsakes redoing Body Heat so it can offer something inferior.Ī one-off like Serenity shouldn't be a big deal,and 20 years ago, it would have just been a bad movie. ![]() here's what's up!" plot twist ( The Others comes to mind), but it has to be entertaining in its A-to-B-to-C plot functions and character work. You can make a movie fashioned around a "Wait. Night Shyamalan had spent so much time setting up the twist epilogue that he forgot to tell an emotionally-tinged story about a young boy who could speak to ghosts and how he learns to communicate with his mother. While this is not a spoiler specific to Serenity, but picture The Sixth Sense if M. While the big picture somewhat explains the lack of incident and character work, that doesn't mean what unspools onscreen isn't lacking in baseline entertainment value. It's a strikingly small picture, despite the solid cast (which includes Diane Lane and Djimon Hounsou) and an alleged $25 million budget. There's a little of that, but most of the genre trappings are what you've seen in the trailer. The various twists and turns constantly prevent the movie from doing what it should be doing, which is offering an old-school erotic crime drama/melodrama with sexy movie stars chewing into meaty dialogue and haggling over moral dilemmas. They will be disappointed not because Serenity is more than t but rather because it is less than that. Those who walk into Serenity hoping for a hot-and-sweaty film noir along the lines of Double Indemnity or Out of Time will be sorely disappointed. If he is willing to take her abusive husband (Jason Clarke) out to see and drop him into shark-infested waters, she'll pay him $10 million cash. Things kick into gear when his ex-wife (Anne Hathaway) shows up with an offer. If you've seen the preview you know that it features Matthew McConaughey as a down-on-his-luck boat captain who ekes out a living selling somewhat adventurous fishing trips to paying customers. Second, the "bigger game" that it's playing us the very thing we came to see. The problem is that the entire movie is so dedicated to its gimmicks that it forgets to be a nuts-and-bolts character melodrama.įirst, it's one of those movies like Lucky Number Slevin or The Accountant that spends much of its third act explaining the previous two acts in a way that is supposed to turn questions into answers. The problem with Serenity isn't that it is undone by a climactic twist or third-act shocker. Whether you guess where the movie is going before the movie starts dropping huge hints (within the first half-hour), you'll find yourself yearning for the movie to just be the film that was advertised, with all the character work that would otherwise entail. ![]() No, I won't give away anything beyond the trailer pitch, but you'll notice pretty quickly that something is slightly off-kilter. But, truth be told, the problem with Serenity is that it's not remotely content to just be a movie. ![]()
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