Recensioni di Metacritic

Tobey Maguire's characteristic placidity makes a fine mask for a man who is thoroughly awful.

Top-shelf cast, headed by Tobey Maguire, slips into familiar grooves of adultery, lies, blackmail, and pet poisoning, it's the spectacular blow-ups and dressing-downs that make this such a nervy pleasure.

Instead of turning soft and squishy, this examination of karma gets tougher as it goes along. Its refusal to settle into a cozy niche may be commercially disastrous, but I take it as a sign of integrity.

In The Details' finest moments, writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes exerts a precise control over tone using sound and performance; in its worst moments, the score and actors overcompensate for weak material. Those elements let Estes get away with often-indulgent writing, throwing up whole scenes that don't add texture or conflict.

Manages to be both compelling and unsatisfying. But what limits it isn't lack of execution. The movie is many things, but a mess isn't one of them. Estes knows exactly what he wants. Whether it's worth wanting is another matter.

Described as an "existential horror film," The Details can't quite reach the same level of excellence as The Coen Brothers' recent "A Serious Man," another film about a man being punished (or rewarded) by fate based on his actions.

The lone standout is Linney's performance as the deranged neighbor, whose erratic combination of sexual desperation and extreme vulnerability keeps the film on life support.

If only writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes had bothered to dig a little bit deeper than those damn raccoons did.

It's a familiar mold: the perils of suburban discontent have been so thoroughly explored that The Details plays like a hodgepodge of familiar circumstances on an assembly line to disaster.

The Details is as smug and self-satisfied as its privileged lead character.