The Maker

One of the best movies I've ever stumbled across. A great character-driven low-budget film. Definitely worth checking out for yourself.

There were so many good things here -- interesting characters, good details (like the Minnell's perfect home being right next to an ugly industrial complex), and the potential for a nice dramatic movie about troubled brothers reuniting. The filmmakers had lots of good ideas and no way to weave them together into a coherent movie. Modine was sadly unconvincing as a bad guy, Madsen was an unnecessary scenery-chewing addition, and how Balk's character was written off was a crime. The scenes between Bella and Josh were the best. Jonathan Rhys Meyers was excellent! (He does a good American accent.) He brought a very genuine, believable feel to the character Josh. It's a shame the movie let him down by becoming increasingly implausible, and finally just a low-budget action climax cliche. Good cast & good ideas make this worth seeing.

I saw this movie solely because Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Fairuza Balk are in it, but it turned out to be worthwhile on its own merit. Of course, the performances by Rhys-Meyers and Balk do help. The crime story angle of it isn't terribly interesting. Whooo, lotsa shooting and squealing tires. (Yawn) The story of a teenager idling in life and waiting for it to happen to him rings true, though. Modine makes a sufficiently oily criminal trying to extend the "family business." The sequence where Josh finds out what happened to their parents is unnecessarily overblown, but it was bearable. Balk is, as usual, a hidden gem. Mary Louise Parker I didn't even recognize for a while, and her character seemed to be a plot device, but she did fairly well. I was floored watching Rhys-Meyers, thinking all the while "THIS is Brian Slade from 'Velvet Goldmine'??? Without the makeup and with his natural hair he looks at least five years younger, and it strikes you "heh, he's just a kid." One that can act, I've decided. His American accent is perfect, tinny and hollow and more authentic-sounding than those of some of the real Americans in the movie. I've rarely if ever heard a foreigner evoke so perfect an imitation of American speech. Anyway, this is a worthwhile movie. A little generic sometimes, but overall it's very decent. Ignore the misleading video box, but watch for the humorous parts, like when Rhys-Meyers gets pulled over by his dream girl in blue for running a stop sign.

The film is about two brothers who lost contact with each other during their teenage years. The younger brother Josh, live a messy but rather okay life, he hang out with his friends, doing silly things. At Josh 18th birthday his long lost brother comes home... I leave the rest for you to find out.

I think it's a kind of messy movie, it really doesn't tell a story. Not a good story anyway. You can almost figure out quite fast how things are. The acting in the movie was decent, Josh wears the same expression on his face during 99% of the film.

My advice to you, watch it if you're really bored.

For the most part, the only things that brought me through the whole film are that it was very difficult to get the loan of a copy of the film via interlibrary loan, and it has Rhys Meyers (as he spelled it for this film) in it, who is always nice to look at. Although there is a good premise for an interesting film and story, there was not enough continuity and plot development to keep me interested and engaged. There were a number of subplots and minor characters which and who really didn't add anything of value to the story. I think that if you are a fan of Rhys-Myers or Modine, you may want to see the film in order to get to see them in an unreleased-for-theaters film, but otherwise, it really isn't work your time or trouble. If you're planning to enjoy looking at Rhys-Myers' skin, you can do a lot better with some of his other work. Tangled may not be an excellent film, either, but he drops his pants for you in it, and that is worth something you won't get out of "The Maker."