Viper Club

Maryam Keshavarz is a true visionary director. She makes art about subjects that matter. Viper Club is moving and intelligent. The cast, the writing, the visual poetry. So skillfully done!!

For me, the movie does not let down. Susan Sarandon plays a nurse whose son's a freelance journalist who gets kidnapped, while in Syria and she struggles to do what needs to be done to get him back.

It would be a Lifetime movie of the week if it was not for Susan Sarandon's involvement, and it really helps. Such a fine actress portraying the frustration of a woman who's son has been missing for three months and it seems like her government is not doing anything and she's not sure if an alternative that was given to her (the Viper Club the pulls their resources together in order to pay ransoms for kidnapped people the government will not help) will work.

It's also different from Lifetime as the movie is a real downer, but Ironically that's what makes it good.

The best thing about this film is the portrayal of a middle aged nurse facing this crisis. Well written character and well acted. The editing is choppy. The storyline is murky. Too many sentimental flashbacks and hallucinations. They seem formulaic. If the whole film had the authenticity of the main character as a strong woman in pain, it could have been engrossing. It did not.

I thought the film was good. It's no 10 but on-the-other-hand it's no 1. I gave it 6 stars because of Susan's compelling performance, good choice for this role. Also, besides the main story line being lost sometimes and its sluggishness, I just found this as an opportunity to pay attention of how it portrays a group of people who spend a deal of time together their compassion and empathy for one another - regardless what the wins and losses were. I enjoyed it and thought it was cool. imo :)

I liked this film well enough. It told a sad story about some of the horrible realities that some of us face due to the gravitational pull created by the "war on terror". Sarandon carried the film but the part was written that way. This would have been better as a miniseries. I liked a lot of the characters despite their small parts. More about the son's current and previous trips to the Middle East and a less abrupt ending could have rounded out another episode or two. This was an American film which doesn't do mini-series nearly as much as the UK but it would have been better as a two parter. Anyone that rated this a 1 probably didn't watch it but scored it low because of Sarandon's political views. I don't care about that. If she sucked in a movie then I will say so but she did just fine in this one.