Amber Heard gets full marks for this one. She is 100% great in it. So much so that I at first, during the first half, proclaimed this movie to be an absolute winner. But it is those two beautiful girls, she and Odette Yustman, that carry the movie during its first half. When the **** strikes the fan, and the movie turns dark, many cracks start to show, there is no charm left, and I get critical of the surprisingly overrated male actors. Karl Urban started off well as Michael, but what the hell happened? He played the character totally wrong in the second half, came across as dumber than dumb. That Calvo guy, also not quite as good a performance as the filmmakers seem to think. Good enough, but not as great as they make it out to be on the commentary. The strong point of the movie, besides the beauty of the two female leads, is their charm, they are highly watchable, cute together. They're both very good actresses, and at the rate the movie sets off, I'd have been far more generous with my star rating. But things become kinda too easy for our heroine, she locates the missing girl too easily, and has the innate unerring ability to surely kick a guy dead-center where it hurts the most, not just once, but regularly. In short, there is a lack of the kind of suspense that was needed to make this movie riveting in the second half. The ending comes too abrupt, when the violence is over, the movie comes to an end. Yes, I did like that last scene (oddly reminiscent of the climactic scene of ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE) but there should still have been something more.
A good try. Excellent choices in lead girls, and the Argentinian landscape is magnificent. But I'm still bummed by the much-weaker second half, which really threw such a promising start away!
A good try. Excellent choices in lead girls, and the Argentinian landscape is magnificent. But I'm still bummed by the much-weaker second half, which really threw such a promising start away!