Cosa ha fatto Richard

I definitely sought this out because I was a big fan of the director's recent film Room. His directorial hand is sort of similar here, in terms of giving a lot of weight and true significant to the little details in character interactions, and in terms of each half of the film being primarily centered around a different development (although the first half of this is basically set-up and character development so the second half hits harder, and boy does it do a great job of that). I thought all of the performances here were very refined and pretty realistic. The actors do a great job of really inhabiting their characters and making the most out of small moments with he director's help. Overall, very effective film, moves along nicely and a very powerful morality act. That ending is genius.

This film seems to confirm and amplify Abrahamson's (Adam & Paul, Garage) considerable strengths as a film-maker, and, to a lesser extent his frustrating weaknesses.

On the plus side, he is great with his actors, both in who he casts and what he gets out of them. His characters always feel complex and real. He also sets up very convincing, morally ambiguous worlds, situations and people. No easy heroes and villains.

But he also has a tendency to be drawn to melodramatic twists, and those actually make his films less interesting, not more, as it feels like he's trying to force the emotional issues.

In many ways my favorite part of the film was the first 45 minutes before the central incident. Abrahamson is great at observing and capturing the complexities of late teen-age life with subtlety and a fresh eye. These aren't the desperate angry street kids of poverty, nor are they the morally bankrupt idiots we often see rich kids portrayed as. They feel real; they drink, but they're not all alcoholics and stoners. They have sex, but more often than not it's attached to some sense of emotion, at graspings towards being in a relationship. Their parents are flawed but trying. Its people as people, not just symbols, even though subtle issues of class and social standing inform the whole story.

But when it gets to the big twists and the big themes, I felt it laboring more, working at it's effects instead of letting them happen. It's not that the 2nd half isn't good,it's that it lacks the power the set up and situation seems to promise. It sticks to it's ambiguity, but it starts to feel just a touch like an intellectual conceit, not an exploration of darker human truths.

I almost enjoyed the film but the dialogue was poor and left the film wanting.To be fair the film did have some half decent acting from a young cast and the film ticked along nicely holding my interest throughout.The setting did seem more like the kind of Ireland i grew up in myself during the Celtic tiger.

I doubt this film will be winning awards but it was a decent watch all the same.So just to have a bit of a moan i have to say my major gripe with the film was how annoying the lead actors accent was.This might be a slight exaggeration but it felt as if every second word that came out of his mouth was "like" it really began to grate on me.I honestly don't think i could have "like" taken much more of it "like" you know what i mean "like".

'What Richard Did' is a distinctly underwhelming title for this film, but it is at least descriptive. Richard is a good looking middle class lad, seemingly someone with few problems other than a bit of entirely normal teenage sexual jealousy; then something bad happens, and he has to deal with it. I thought the portrait of his everyday life was pretty convincing and well done; but the film's refuasl to descend into melodrama thereafter is a weakness as much as a strength: following the shock, nothing much happens. The result feels like half a story: well-enough told, but without sufficient underlying narrative purpose.

'What Richard Did' is a bit of a slow burn, but it's complex and often emotional, consistently anchored by an amazingly ambiguous and complicated performance from Jack Reynor.