The Gateway

Shea Wigham does a very good job as the weary social worker who really cares about the hard luck cases he counsels, mostly women with children who have a difficult time staying stable. He's a former boxer who lost his way in life, a father who abandoned him and his mother when he was younger and tried to channel his energy as a boxer robbed of a good chance at success into helping others.

Olivia Munn is the damsel in distress who can't help herself, especially when her husband (or ex) is released from jail and comes home... but still wants to pull of jobs with his old boss, Frank Grillo (who is rarely in the film.)

The problem with this film is that it doesn't really go anywhere much of the time. It's meant to be a long character study but even that isn't so revealing. He has a conflict with his old man and it's nothing we haven't seen a million times. Dad, I resent you, won't ever ask anything from you, etc. Etc.

Olivia Munn plays the most inept mother on the planet. Wigham tries to help her and keep her job, child, stability but she resents him. Olivia's ex comes back and danger and jealousy and suspicion is about.

This should have been a much, much better film. The acting is actually quite good - from all but Munn who just doesn't sell the role, perhaps it is the script which makes her into an inconsiderate blubberer all the time. It fails for the most part as a character study as there is only a limited look into what drives this man to be a social worker and a twist that happens is incredibly lame and feels like a forced plot device. And in the end, the movie goes where many predictable films go where the writer wants you to go "Oh.... wow man... that's deep. That's heavy and an emotional hit" and it really isn't. The very ending is also intended to be clever and i could see where it was going but, it too, was a little too unnatural in the attempt to be cute and clever.

This is not a terrible movie and Wigham is very good in his character. Like others say, unfortunately, it just doesn't really go anywhere and is just a simple story of the reformed loser who tries his hardest to go the extra mile to help out this one irritating woman and her son so they can stay together and protected from her dangerous ex. That's it.

Was it a good movie? No.

Was it a bad movie? Yes.

Did I run out of everything else to watch? Yup.

Did I already see it once and totally forgot? Seems likely.

I just watched it for the name brand actors hoping it wasn't terrible. I would normally can a movie like this right after the first fishbowl shot but I dragged my ass through it and was entertained by all the trashyness.

Not going to win any friends with this butt-salad.

I really feel sorry for Grillo, Munn and even Dern (who's been horrible in many other bad movies lately, but was actually good in this one) for having their names attached to this far-fetched ridiculous wannabe crime-drama-thriller pretentious mess.

Although Whigham's performance was decent, his character was cringeworthy, laughable, and annoyingly unconvincing. His James Dean wannabe look and demeanor did him zero justice, as did his unrealistic and ridiculous character's attempt to portray a social worker. The casting director needs to get fired for that call, as do the writers.

To make matters worse, there were actually three writers that came together to give us this nonsense; a (pulling out a mini-bottle out of thin-air) alcoholic chain-smoking drug-using gun-wielding emotional-baggage-carrying straight-faced low-monotonic dude-too-cool licensed city social worker? It may have worked as a comedic parody, but in this case, it was as I already mentioned, cringeworthy, laughable, and annoyingly unconvincing. Don't even get me started on the massive plot and technical issues.

The pacing was so slow with many unnecessary and long winded scenes, that the normally time-flies 91 min runtime felt like almost 3 hours. The screenplay was so dull, static and stale, I couldn't wait to get to the end. Aside from the last 10 mins of (somewhat) action, there were zero thrills in this thriller, and the drama was melodramatic in a soap-opera way.

And what was the point of the last 3+ mins of church choir singing? Then right after adding "In the United States, 250,000 children enter the foster care system every year", is an embarrassment to the foster system by portraying Whigham as a "licensed city social worker". What's the point to that message relating to this film? "Hopefully none of those 250,000 children will end up with such an unprofessional and unqualified social worker like Parker" lmao? Adding that statistic doesn't make the film any better, it makes it much worse.

One of those writers, Michele Civetta, also directed this mess. Using fish-eye lens and slow-mo scenes is something I'd expect to see in a 5th grade drama class production - from the 90's. His directing overall was amateurish at best, and he failed in directing his cast properly, with the exception of Grillo, who clearly carried his own weight perfectly without any need for cast direction. The score was ok, but the soundtrack was overbearing. I really can't think of anything redeeming about this film, it was such a disappointment.

It's a shame so much good talent was wasted in this nonsense. I'm giving this a very generous 4/10, more so out of pity for some of my favorite actors having this mess on their resume.

This film tells the story of a social worker who helps a family in unexpected ways. I find the story a bit confusing, so I couldn't really get into the story.

I had never heard about the 2021 thriller "The Gateway" from writers Alex Felix Bendaña, Andrew Levitas and Michele Civetta prior to sitting down and watching it here in 2022. All I knew about it was the fact that the movie Olivia Munn and Frank Grillo on the cast list.

The storyline was actually enjoyable. Sure, it wasn't the most innovative or creative of plot concepts, but the storyline made for good entertainment, and that is what matters to me when I sit down and watch a movie. So the writers definitely put together something that worked here in "The Gateway".

The narrative was adequately paced, some slow moments and some fast moments throughout the course of the movie, so it was a pretty nice enough movie experience.

"The Gateway" does have a good cast ensemble. I am not overly familiar with Shea Whigham, but he did perform quite well in this movie, despite of having just a single grimace to put on in every single scene. So there was lacking a bit of facial expressions of emotions and such, but it seemed okay to the character, given the backstory and addiction to alcohol. Olivia Munn was definitely nicely cast and performed quite well, and it was nice to see Bruce Dern in the movie. It was a shame that Frank Grillo only had a small role in the movie, as he could have spruced it up quite a lot. Zach Avery definitely put on a noteworthy performance here.

All in all then "The Gateway" was a good movie. I was definitely entertained by it.

My rating of director Michele Civetta's 2021 movie "The Gateway" lands on a six out of ten stars.