The Summary: A friend pines for his best friend's mistress as the best friend plots to off his wife rather than make her suffer the pain of divorce.
The Good: Often funny, with mostly spot-on performances, especially Pierce Brosnan and Chris Cooper. Brosnan's narration is inspired writing! Beautiful cinematography and set design as well. Good sense of place and time.
The Not So Good: The character relationships felt forced (they didn't feel like they knew one another) and something was lacking in the sense of urgency. I feel the twists weren't quite twisty enough. The best audience experiences are ones where I guess the ending, but end up not only being wrong, but even more pleased with the ending the filmmakers came up with. This, you can guess early on. As for the climax, it's a repeat of an earlier scene with the same end result so the "oomph factor" is gone. And as a Rachel McAdams fan, I was sad to see her so underutilized. She really only has about 10 minutes of screen time. If this is the girl worth betraying your best friend and killing your wife for, we need to see more of her to see why. Pretty just doesn't cut it.
The Good: Often funny, with mostly spot-on performances, especially Pierce Brosnan and Chris Cooper. Brosnan's narration is inspired writing! Beautiful cinematography and set design as well. Good sense of place and time.
The Not So Good: The character relationships felt forced (they didn't feel like they knew one another) and something was lacking in the sense of urgency. I feel the twists weren't quite twisty enough. The best audience experiences are ones where I guess the ending, but end up not only being wrong, but even more pleased with the ending the filmmakers came up with. This, you can guess early on. As for the climax, it's a repeat of an earlier scene with the same end result so the "oomph factor" is gone. And as a Rachel McAdams fan, I was sad to see her so underutilized. She really only has about 10 minutes of screen time. If this is the girl worth betraying your best friend and killing your wife for, we need to see more of her to see why. Pretty just doesn't cut it.