MovieChat Forums > A Most Violent Year (2015) Discussion > tough movie to critique

tough movie to critique

posted 9 years ago by CrimsondoubleChin
2 replies | jump to latest

You know what I mean? This & Prisoners are two movies recently that I've had real trouble articulating what I didn't enjoy about them. Don't get me wrong, I thought this was a good movie, and I think Chandor's talented to the point that nothing would be blatantly weak in the film. I just don't know whether it was slightly off pacing, a bit too abstract to fully invest in, or what. It just feels like this was a skilled impersonation of a great gangster tale rather than actually one itself.

[–] london777 8 years ago

Interesting you link the two as I have just watched them in succession. They both play with our expectations of "heroic" behavior by the leads and with "grey" moral issues so that we end up hardly knowing what to think about what we have just "lived" through.

"Most Violent" is the more subtle and realistic movie. Serial killers are getting to be a tired trope these days (surely there is not one in every American small town?), and child-molesting/-murder a too convenient way to engage our sympathies.

With "Most Violent", the more I thought about it afterwards, including the alleged defects and plot-holes posted by others, the more it made sense.

In the case of "Prisoners" I felt that my emotions had been manipulated, and not in a good way, despite the many talented touches in the movie.

[–] Navaros 8 years ago

It just feels like this was a skilled impersonation of a great gangster tale rather than actually one itself.

That's almost exactly right, but I'd modify your statement somewhat by adding this: it's film that is styled as the gangster genre, but minus almost every single element that makes gangster films interesting.

That's why I say it's part of a new film genre: the troll film. AMVY is by far the best troll film of 2014. That's not to say that it's a good film, but rather, that it's great at trolling as a gangster film.