The Livingston Gardener

I don't think this is the worst film ever, but there are two things that make it virtually unwatchable: 1. The acting is atrocious. Every character seems to have gone to the Soap Opera Shake Your Head Back and Forth a Little to Add Gravitas to Your Performance School of Acting. 2. The pacing is horrific. Horrific. Scenes that should have been edited out are left to continue for minute upon painful minute, while the poor actors shake their heads a little back and forth to add gravitas to their lives. It coulda been a better film. I get that there were budget constraints, but when you have only a few places to shoot, you have to add something visually in the way of at least one (just one, seriously) quick cut or odd angle or something. As an example of how long and dull the scenes are, take the scene where the interviewer is told by his girlfriend/boss that he has to jump ahead in the interview. He becomes enraged and throws around all kinds of unbelievable emotions while the camera crew just tune him out, and then minutes later it ends with him being flirtatious and cute. Yikes. I recommend watching this, but be warned, the long long speeches might knock you out. I had to do laundry and I pondered whether or not to pause the movie when I stepped out to the laundry room.

Basically, I liked the story and found this movie interesting to watch. A serial killer (who has murdered five young women and is suspected in the disappearance of many others) demands a live television interview with a network news program in exchange for revealing the whereabouts of the undiscovered victims. Frankly, I thought that was implausible - that either a network would agree to such an interview or that the authorities would alloow it to happen, although that was dealt with by having one of the missing women be the daughter of a senator who had strings to pull. The bulk of the movie is set in the interview room as the killer and the reporter square off against each other. It's a simple setting, and aside from the implausibility was pretty well done. I liked Douglas M. Griffin as the killer and James Kyson as the reporter. Both were believable in their roles, and Griffin brought the right feel to the character, who over the course of the movie morphs from a simple serial killer into a philosophical and charismatic quasi-religious figure who's selling his own brand of spirituality mixed with nihilism - Gardener (the killer) sums up his beliefs in classically nihilistic terms - ultimately the meaning of life is that there's no meaning to life.

As the interview unfolds we don't learn a great deal about the killer, but we do learn about the reality of network television. Clearly, this interview was not granted as a public service but merely as a ratings grabber - and the reporter was under pressure to speed it up and get to the good stuff from pretty early on. It was interesting to watch as Gardener turned the interveiw around and made it about Lawrence (the reporter.)

The weakest part of this movie is its ending. It leads up to nowhere. Lots of questions are left unanswered and there's no real resolution to anything. So this ended on a down note for me. But the bulk of the movie was interesting as a sort of psychological drama. It's not an exciting movie. The basic setting of a one on one interview worked against there being any sustained action, but it had a philosophical foundation that I found interesting to watch. (7/10)