South of Heaven

I gave it a 7.3, out of ten because the editing and unanswered q s. But, I think the woman(Anne)was astounding, and only did I find out in the credits that it was actually Evangeline Lilly, thus began my mind to be blown. Wow! Great performance!!!

I rented it from our local library and saw Sudeikus on the front cover at a glance so I grabbed it. Played it wee hours of the morning and I will look to purchase it. Hit all emotions, and Jason can do drama like Bill Murray and honestly I didn't recognize her that it was her.

And IMDB employees and owners, change it so we can rate with the decimal point!!!

I don't know how Aharon Keshales got the money to hire A-list actors, but the money was all spent on the lead.

Nothing was spent on sets, music, sound, editing... and the decision to direct his own script was a disaster.

This needed a massive rewrite to fix plot holes and a serious director and cinematographer to make it more Cormac McCarthy.

Bad bad bad.

Evangeline Lily is always great and Jason did well in a serious role, but the plot and tempo and lack of chemistry was more a director problem than an actor problem.

Sad to see something this bad hit Sudeikas' career right now.

Total waste of time.

Newb co-writer, producer and director Aharon Keshales was close to having a great film, but sadly missed the mark with many rookie filmmaking mistakes. For starters, many scenes were way too long and unnecessary, and the slow pacing made the two-hour runtime feel endless. This film needed at least 20 mins cut out of it to maintain suspense and make it more engaging.

Then, having random events happen that are irrelevant to the main narrative detract from the film's main premise; at around the one hour mark, the story basically hits the reset button and a entirely different narrative begins. It's like the beginning of a different episode and it all happens purely by chance and key conflicts of the first hour are completely inconsequential to what follows. You keep expecting them to intersect, but they never do. There's no motivation or reason behind it, a random event simply happens for no other reason than the writers merely wanted to put Jimmy in another tough spot.

That's the major issue this film had, the disjointed and convoluted events that confuse the narrative, and make you lose interest in the characters and faith in their motivations - like when Jimmy goes from a sweet and doting schlub to a one-shot-killing henchmen destroyer - it gets really implausible in a hurry. To make matters worse, Keshales decides to ruin a happy and satisfying ending with a fade-out and fade-in enigmatic final shot that adds yet another question to the already convoluted mess.

Nevertheless, all casting and performances were excellent, especially Sudeikis and Lilly with their convincing chemistry, and the score and cinematography where spot on. It's too bad the writing couldn't have been tighter and more focused.

Sudeikis, refreshingly, doesn't exactly fit the role of a convict on parole that wants to spend a year with his lifelong love, Lilly. But everyone is a caricature of the role that they play and it tanks the possibilities of the crime/thriller part of the film.

Well I have to agree with the negative reviews for once. Despite the good cast and an interesting first half the movie quality went downhill pretty fast. There are a lot of scenes that weren't good at all, that didn't make much sense and that brought the quality of the story down. As for the acting there were some actors that were not convincing at all at times. And I'm not talking about extras but major actors. I don't know what happened, it started good but it turned bad at one point and it never recovered. Too bad because it had potential.