The Vicious Kind

This felt like a breeze of fresh air, and it ambushes the viewer in a very good way. Taking place in a cold small town, I tended to put it on a strange "cold-far-away-god forgotten postmodern scenery" shelf, strange because this shelf contains Lost in translation, The girl in the café, Gigantic, Twilight and other seemingly unrelated movies. But The Vicious Kind is by far the most alive and vigorous movie out of these, in which the characters seem to be living very sincerely and intense, even against their own will. The humor is also genial, and the tenderness/passion that the love (or simply sex) story inspires is also an unexpected surprise. Loved this movie. The way one would appreciate a hot and tasty meal in a cold winter's day, after a mouthful of cold cucumber soup that the more pretend to be classy movies often serve. and i imagine the main character ended up to be Sully Sullivan from Nobody's Fool, the 1994 movie, played by Paul Newman.

The premise of this movie seemed interesting enough for me to give it a try. The story revolves around Caleb, a misogynist construction worker in a small town. His younger brother Peter just got his first "serious" girlfriend, which he is bringing for Thanksgiving to their dad's.

Adam Scott was an unknown to me but is absolutely amazing in the role of Caleb. He conveys all the suffering in this character on the inside, with all the aggressiveness on the outside. Caleb is fueled by hatred and negativity but the writing and direction of Lee Toland Krieger, and the performance by Scott suggest that if this hatred is explicitly directed at others, it is implicitly self-hatred.

Caleb is estranged from his father for reasons we learn about through the movie and his relationship with his naive brother is uneasy at best. The gap separating them is the very different outlook they have on life and love. Peter is more of an idealist while Caleb is on the slippery slope of fatalism.

Neither of them seems to be able to see the complete picture and their father Donald Sinclaire might have something to do with this. Donald is the prototypical dad figure. Doesn't talk much and prefers to address superficialities when he does. A scene that particularly highlight this is a dinner scene between him, Peter and his girlfriend Emma. While Donald can't stop complimenting Emma on her looks, Peter at some point shifts to her academic background, which seems to put the father outside his comfort zone. Veteran actor J.K. Simmons puts another great performance as the father, a great casting choice.

The last piece of the puzzle is the outsider who crashes in this family at such a critical point. Emma is Peter's new girlfriend and while it would have been easy to make this character little more than a plot device, she has several interesting layers to her. What we know from the start about her is that she is smart, polite, beautiful and herself comes from a less than perfect family (there is talk of alcoholism). More importantly perhaps, she dumped someone for Peter, which further fuels Caleb's belief that "all women are whores" as he likes to say. I had no idea who Brittany Snow was but I was blown away by her performance as Emma. Looking at her credit list afterwards, I would never have expected that.

The story mixes all the things you'd expect from an indie. Humor (mostly dark) is there, the main characters are quirky and the peripheral characters even more so. The camera-work, editing and music all ooze of this "indie feel". If anything, this hurts this heartfelt film more than it helps. Lee Toland Krieger obviously wrote a great and heartfelt story but there,s this sense that he has watched a lot of film festival darlings and well... it's just not terribly original in presentation and at times, feels formulaic.

The only other negative aspect would be the character of Peter. Naive and idealistic does not mean a character should be bland. Likewise, actor Alex Frost is unremarkable in this role.

All in all, this is a fine film and with Caleb Sinclaire, we have been given a misogynist character that almost rivals Roger Swanson (from the cult classic Roger Dodger). I just hope that in the future, Lee Toland Krieger will find his own voice and style when making movies as opposed to shooting it "like other indies".

Caleb Sinclaire (Adam Scott) is an angry bitter drunken insomniac. His brother Peter (Alex Frost) has a new girlfriend Emma Gainsborough (Brittany Snow). They pick her up from college. Caleb warns him against all women, but he can't seem to get his mind off of her. Peter and Emma are staying with their father Donald (J.K. Simmons), and Caleb has a contentious relationship with their father.

This is definitely not the normal character that Adam Scott usually plays and it's far away from his nice guy persona. Caleb is unhinged and self destructive. It's a good performance from him as well as Brittany Snow. Writer/director Lee Toland Krieger has created a difficult dysfunctional family dynamics. The story has just a little bit of humor. I wish it had a bit more as well as more drama. It's an interesting little indie with some interesting performances.

In a lot of ways this feels like a some what darker version of Dan In Real life. Caleb (Adam Scott) picks up his little brother Peter (Alex Frost) and his new girlfriend Emma (Brittany Snow) for Thanksgiving. It becomes clear that Caleb is dealing with some raging emotional issues. About his ex-girlfriend and his dad Donald (J.K. Simmons)who tends to have issues of his own. Caleb starts to grow infatuated with Emma to the point of almost breaking sanity.

I"m not going to spoil the film so I am going to keep my feelings short. By no means is the story original,but the acting was good enough to enjoy it. I think Adam Scott played his role well. As well as Brittany . Got to give it up for J.K. Simmons! That guy rocks at playing dad's . The weakest acted role in my opinion was by Alex Frost. Not saying it was bad! Just not as strong as the others. He played a great bully in Drillbit Taylor though ill give him that.

I give it an 8 out of 10! Simply because of the acting, and starring at Brittany for an hour and a half wasn't so bad either...Shes Gorgeous!

The Vicious Kind is the kind of film that will play great to rabid audiences on the festival circuit, the problem being that now it has been released to the general paying public. There are a lot of problems with this film, namely; the humor isn't very funny, and the drama can't be taken too seriously. This will leave any film dead on arrival. What The Vicious Kind attempts to do is mix comedy and drama, and what's left is blandness and confusion amongst the aud per what is supposed to be funny and what is serious. Adam Scott is decent, but he could be real good if the script gave him some real emotion to play off of. Which brings me to the films next major problem - motivations. What drives these characters to do what they do? There is some back story, but it felt very exposition-y. There's a lot of crying being done here seemingly without reason as well, explicitly as means to "deepen" the characters and solemn the mood.

If you want to see a truly great American Indie this year, rent "Two Lovers".