Sweet Virginia

The score of the film is great creates the perfect atmosphere, the performances of all the actors individually are very good and it's a very good but very short slow burn. Despite that when it all comes together the end result and overall story just doesn't feel worth it despite the majority of individual components working very well together it just came out a bit average. I doubt I'll remember having watched it in a few years time but it certainly wasn't bad. Just okay.

Pros: Scenario 6/10 (Terse script, plain scenario not complicated, no plot holes but nothing that we haven't see before... not much character analysis, covered by good acting though) Direction 7/10 (Jamie Dagg made a good dark Neo-Noir/Neo Western thriller) Cinematography 7/10 Jon Bernthal 7/10 Christopher Abbott 8/10 (Really convincing as a psycho character... scary convincing!) Cons: Actually I found no important weaknesses in this movie. Nice movie. 7/10 by me.

This movie is stocked with great actors and great plot ideas that just never come together. Bernthal is great but even his character is a bit flimsy with a lot of unanswered details about his past looming over the viewer. The action in the film is great and you'll be engaged, but you'll be wishing there was more character development to really pull things together.

I was enjoying this movie until the abrupt, unclimactic, uncreative end. So maddening! My fiance and i sat here for like 5 minutes afterwards coming up with different endings that would have been better...did the writer just give up? Was he bored too? Ugh.

So. They set up the characters really well. Super engaging scenes that makes you learn about all of them. They open a ton of threads about all of them in subtle, natural ways, plus relationships between some of them...

And then all ends in a few sequences in a non-climax. I honestly believe they thought they could film for more time in a two hour film, they were noticed that wasn't going to be the case, and rewrote the end so they could at least sell the movie.

Having said that, the acting and script of the good parts (2/3) of the movie was so good that I couldn't give this movie less than a six...