A woman is murdered on a New York City subway platform in 1991, and is later revealed to be the mother of a young girl who had witnessed this murder, named Ally Craig (Emilie de Ravin). Ten years later, Tyler Hawkins (Robert Pattinson) is a rebellious 22 year old living in New York City and attending New York University. He has had a strained relationship with his businessman father, Charles (Pierce Brosnan), since his brother's suicide.
Roger Ebert, surprisingly, generally liked the film, giving it three out of four stars and calling it a "well-made movie. I cared about the characters. I felt for them. Liberate them from the plot's destiny, which is an anvil around their necks, and you might have something" but goes on to say it "tries to borrow profound meaning, but succeeds only in upstaging itself so overwhelmingly that its characters become irrelevant". This is true, but I felt it played into the underlying message Ally had about experiencing the good before something bad possibly happens.
Most reviews, however, were negative. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly called it a "shameless contraption of ridiculously sad things befalling attractive people". Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe commented that the film "crassly repurposes tragedy to excuse its clichés." I accept the film has plenty of clichés -- a great many romantic comedies and "chick flicks" have had instances of guys dating girls under false pretenses, only to be inevitably discovered later. But I find this forgivable in that this film made a much more serious attempt without any of the humor, and the romance was only one of the plots.
I think the stand-out actor here is not Robert Pattinson. Yes, many reviews have called this his breaking out from "Twilight" and his move into "Rebel Without a Cause" territory. But, despite his hard-fighting, drinking, smoking image, Pattinson's range seems to be rather small, as he was not substantially different from his Edward Cullen persona. Likewise, Emilie de Ravin, while more central here than on "Lost", could have had her role played by anyone. The real winner was Ruby Jerins, who played Caroline Hawkins, Tyler's little sister. She was given an emotional role to fill, and did it with ease -- I never felt for Tyler or Ally, but Caroline had it hard.
The film is far from perfect. Too many scenes seemed out of focus, the camera was very shaky, and for some reason there were many instances where the rooms were bathed in a blue light. I'd blame Summit Entertainment, as they similarly give "Twilight" poor lighting, but as we've seen with "The Hurt Locker", "Push", and "Knowing", they are capable of making decent directorial decisions (however much say they actually have in the matter). The director here, Allen Coulter ("Hollywoodland"), left something to be desired.
I had low expectations walking into this one and thought I would be walking out laughing at its shortcomings. In all fairness, I was wrong. Within ten or fifteen minutes I saw they were making a real effort and had a success on their hands. I left the theater impressed and with a new respect for Pattinson... I don't know if he has a future, but if he does this was his first step.
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