Grey Lady

An American drama; A story about a Boston homicide detective who searches for clues about a serial killer that murdered both his sister and his partner which leads him to Nantucket, an island where he uncovers secrets about his family's past. The main problem with the film is it doesn't spend enough time on character development before launching into overwrought plotting. The pacing fails because of a sketchy main character. Although it is absorbing as a whodunnit, with such crude methods of viciousness and so many plot turns it felt forced and hard to engage with. It boasts a lovely setting and all the technical elements are tick-boxed for a modern drama.

The Grey Lady sets out to confuse and mystify, and achieves that spectacularly. Am I sorry I watched it? NO. If one does not occasionally view, or suffer through poorly written movies, one will not feel the extreme pleasure of a 9 or 10. Having watched with some intent, mainly because I was trying to understand the background to the storyline, unsuccessfully I might add, it served its purpose of being something to watch.

Set in Nantucket one begins to wonder why that location. Perhaps the isolation and smaller population fits the bill for the unfolding of an erratic and at times nonsensical set of events that would be ridiculous in a city setting.

Full of cliches, sudden attraction between characters, irrational art purchases, and an anti out of town cop police chief, who retracts his anti feelings in hindsight. A fairly wooden acting performance by many, or most, cast members.

I came, I saw, I watched. I now have a lowish bar against which I can judge other movies.

This was truly one of the worst films I've seen in a long time.

The story was incoherent throughout most of the film, leaving you constantly wondering who was who and what they were doing. Characters just sort of arrived and did their thing giving you no idea what the hell was going on. Characters also so sort of disappeared at critical moments. There were so many illogical leaps and gaping plot holes, how on earth did they even stitch this movie together?

For example, the main character, Doyle a Boston detective, has a cup of tea with Melissa an artist and the female lead (and a Jane Seymour doppelganger to boot) and within minutes everyone is calling her his girlfriend. When literally nothing on screen suggests they've even held hands.

Another example is when the Director, who cast himself as the Police Chief, tells Doyle to leave the island and immediately stop working the case, Doyle just says no and broods for a few seconds, so of course the Police Chief immediately forgets what he just said and organizes all the assistance he can give Doyle to pursue the case... I mean it was literally just a beat and he was doing the opposite.

The worst one was the final shoot-out, Doyle had enlisted a local with a bow to help him assault the house the killers were holed up in, a bowman who was good enough to send an arrow through one of the killers legs. Yet the bowman just disappears after that shot, he wasn't injured in the fight, he didn't run away, he just kind stayed out of the final showdown, almost like he said, you guys work it out without me.

The dialogue was universally awful, so it's hard to know if you should blame the actors for it, but they were all utterly wooden in their performances. Hard to pick who was the worst on screen as they all had a crack at being awful.

Lastly the film's score was so odd, one minute we had Gladiator style haunting singing for a flash back, to a jaunty Scottish jigs, then to an Irish style dance, then to contemporary ballads... none of them matched the scenes unfold on screen at all. It was off-putting and by the end of the film you couldn't help but laugh at how bad it all was.

I've watched many lowly rated films and all of them have some redeeming features, not this film, it is absolutely the worst film I've seen in years, that anyone gives this more than about 3 or 4 out of 10 is just mind blowing.

If you like engaging slow burners are in for a treat. I just cannot understand how anyone can give this 1 star , there are really low budget poorly made and badly acted films out there but this film is not one of them and for people to give this film such a low rating has no right leaving reviews

The premise interested me. I really enjoy a good murder mystery. This was just muddled. The acting/script really weren't that great and just made it all incredibly cheesy.

Spent half of the time wondering what was happening and hoping for a pay off that was at least worth it. It wasn't.