"Little Accidents" is based on screenwriter Sara Coangelo's short 2010 film of the same name. Shot in West Virginia, the chief protagonist is Amos Jenkins, the lone survivor of a mining accident in which ten of his co-workers are killed. Coangelo's central conflict is interesting: will Amos spill the beans and side with the union who want to sue the company for more money? Or will he conveniently "forget" about what transpired so he won't possibly shut down the company and jeopardize his job (the idea of not working bothers salt-of-the-earth Amos, no end).
Coangelo is much less successful with a sub-plot (or a secondary main plot if you will) involving Owen, the son of one of the dead miners, who accidentally kills J.T., the son of a middle management executive at the coal company, Bill Doyle. After bullying Owen, J.T. chases him in the woods, only to be felled by a stone, which Owen hurls at him in self-defense. There's very little interesting about the tortured depression Owen goes through for the rest of the film and even his predictable confession to Doyle and his wife, Diane, proves much more of a relief than cathartic moment for the film goer, at film's end.
One of the big problems with "Little Accidents" is the pacing is extremely lugubrious. The plot is dragged out to the point where one practically finds oneself screaming for the film's scenarist to pick things up! Case in point: the Doyles meeting with the police and subsequent search for the missing boy. Both those scenes could have been cut to the bare minimum to convey what was happening.
Coangelo's characters aren't exactly complete caricatures but more melodramatic stock types. Coangelo imagines what mining folks are like but doesn't quite capture any idiosyncrasies. Instead, Amos meets Diane at wouldn't you know it, a Bible study group! The affair between Amos and Diane is perhaps the most perfunctory and predictable aspect of the film. Rex Reed of "The Observer" is right to conclude that "Little Accidents" is nothing more than a "backwater soap opera without the keener character development the movie needs."
The film has some excellent cinematography as it was shot on location by the talented cinematographer Rachel Morrison. The music, with a haunting score by Marcelo Zarvos, manages to convey the bleak mining town atmosphere utilizing a lone piano and a few violin notes. However, like the film's glacial pacing, the music manages to be over used. The performances are uniformly excellent with special kudos to Josh Lofland as Owen, who once again shines as he did in his earlier break out role, in "Mud."
Ultimately I must agree with Glenn Kinney of RogertEbert.com who writes that the narrative is marked by "the clichéd solemnity of almost each and every scene." Ms. Coangelo would do well to base her next screenplay on an actual historical incident. That way she can avoid the earnest and ordinary story that she has proffered up here.
Coangelo is much less successful with a sub-plot (or a secondary main plot if you will) involving Owen, the son of one of the dead miners, who accidentally kills J.T., the son of a middle management executive at the coal company, Bill Doyle. After bullying Owen, J.T. chases him in the woods, only to be felled by a stone, which Owen hurls at him in self-defense. There's very little interesting about the tortured depression Owen goes through for the rest of the film and even his predictable confession to Doyle and his wife, Diane, proves much more of a relief than cathartic moment for the film goer, at film's end.
One of the big problems with "Little Accidents" is the pacing is extremely lugubrious. The plot is dragged out to the point where one practically finds oneself screaming for the film's scenarist to pick things up! Case in point: the Doyles meeting with the police and subsequent search for the missing boy. Both those scenes could have been cut to the bare minimum to convey what was happening.
Coangelo's characters aren't exactly complete caricatures but more melodramatic stock types. Coangelo imagines what mining folks are like but doesn't quite capture any idiosyncrasies. Instead, Amos meets Diane at wouldn't you know it, a Bible study group! The affair between Amos and Diane is perhaps the most perfunctory and predictable aspect of the film. Rex Reed of "The Observer" is right to conclude that "Little Accidents" is nothing more than a "backwater soap opera without the keener character development the movie needs."
The film has some excellent cinematography as it was shot on location by the talented cinematographer Rachel Morrison. The music, with a haunting score by Marcelo Zarvos, manages to convey the bleak mining town atmosphere utilizing a lone piano and a few violin notes. However, like the film's glacial pacing, the music manages to be over used. The performances are uniformly excellent with special kudos to Josh Lofland as Owen, who once again shines as he did in his earlier break out role, in "Mud."
Ultimately I must agree with Glenn Kinney of RogertEbert.com who writes that the narrative is marked by "the clichéd solemnity of almost each and every scene." Ms. Coangelo would do well to base her next screenplay on an actual historical incident. That way she can avoid the earnest and ordinary story that she has proffered up here.