The Factory

While the pace in "The Factory" is not head over heels fast, then it doesn't really slow down the movie. This movie is built up in a very nice way that slowly builds up suspense and feeds the audience bits and pieces along the way.

What appealed to me about this movie was the storyline, and the way that director Morgan O'Neill managed to entice the audience with the way that the story was presented and still managed to put in some really genius plot twists along the way.

The storyline in "The Factory" was alpha and omega in the movie, but the good cast also helped the movie along quite nicely. It was essentially John Cusack who made me sit down and watch this movie, but it turned out to be Dallas Roberts who ended up carrying the movie with his phenomenal performance as Carl.

I can't claim to be familiar with the true story upon which this movie is based, but the events that took place in the movie were portrayed nicely and realistic. And the fact that some of this actually happened to a certain degree is just disturbing.

"The Factory" might be slow paced, but it is an outstanding movie that really should be watched if you enjoy crime thrillers. Quite a unique movie experience.

After watching this movie, I had to wonder if this genre isn't simply exhausted: basically, psychopath kidnaps daughter of someone he shouldn't have. We all buy into this for one reason. We know that we'll eventually get a pay off in the form of revenge. Make the psychopath as evil as possible so that later we will relish his destruction. We will even overlook inconsistencies and absurdities in the plot as long as we get paid off for it. Well, I'll leave it up to each viewer to determine whether this film paid off, for me, it didn't.

This movie can only work if you accept the amazing coincidence that forms the basis of the story, but then you find that you have to accept a lot more coincidences. What I think happened was that the initial screenplay had logical inconsistencies which the writer(s) attempted to plug which led to more inconsistencies and so on. So you get a lot of contrived scenes and 'wow, look what I found, what a coincidence" scenes. I have a feeling that the whole ending was grafted on as an afterthought and then the screenplay was readjusted to it.

I watched this movie primarily because John Cusack was in it and that gave it a certain credibility. He does okay. There's nothing much in the way of interacting with other characters. They could have been played by mannequins and the movie would have been about the same.

Much of the movie seems like a series of scenes grafted on from other movies like "Taken", "Taxi Driver" and a few others. My advice for potential viewers is to watch those movies instead. The Factory needs too many renovations.

This film moves on at a good pace, the characters are played well and the story is pretty good too. And although I was watching this thinking I've seen this kind of story before I was interested in how it would turn out. You know, the story where a father is on a case which ends up involving him because the daughter becomes a victim, but just as you think you've worked out how it will go, BAM, a massive plot twist which you never see coming! If you say you did see it coming, then you're a genius! I'd heard about this movie over a year ago and then it went off the radar but when it turned up I had to see it, and I an so glad I got to. A truly great film and that plot twist just made the movie so much more enjoyable. I'd watch it again as it was that memorable. So I give this movie an 8.5 out of 10.

Hollywood veteran John Cusack is detective Mike Fletcher, a maverick cop who has a hard time playing by the rules at the best of times, let alone when trying to find his missing daughter. Mistaken for a streetwalker by the creepy-for-the-sake-of-being-creepy Gary Gemeaux (Dallas Roberts), Abby Fletcher (Mae Whitman) is thrown into a makeshift dungeon with a couple of other inmates who are forced to produce children for a mysterious benefactor.

Cusack and Roberts make an honourable effort despite an uninspired script, but that is the only highlight to draw from this film. Part-police procedural, part-torture porn exploitation, The Factory blends the two polarising genres with mixed results; the end product serving more to unsettle than stimulate or entertain.

Many of the film's victims are inherently unlikeable, and as such do not demand audience sympathy for their dire situations to the extent that they should. The Factory is actually tolerable, albeit immediately forgettable, for much of its run time, until an overly ambitious climax shreds any filmic credibility that might have still lingered in the mind of the viewer. The 'twist' ending is both predictable and illogical, resulting in a disastrous conclusion leaving one feeling somewhere between 'unsatisfied' and 'downright cheated'.

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I watched this movie over the summer and thought it was really good. Very good story and a great twist at the end. Dallas Roberts, who is now on Walking Dead, is excellent. Jennifer Carpenter is pretty much playing her character from Dexter minus the cursing, but she still manages to do a great job. Cusack is good as usual, but the movie has a great ending and is a nice little thriller. The only weird thing is that you'll notice that a lot of the scenery seems outdated. That's because the movie was taped in 2007. Why it was sitting on the shelf for so long? Your guess is as good as mine!

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