The Gateway

What the Getaway has going for it is that it was a drama with these little bits of action in it. That was perfect for people like me who may not have been up for the drama and the action was on point.

I saw Frank Grillo is in it and that was a bonus. Grillo seems to be becoming that type of star power that can show up in three or four scenes in a movie and legitimately sell the movie by putting him on the poster.

Olivia Munn is in it too. Looks like she's trying something different to widen her acting skills. She's in luck getting to share the screen with a season actor like Bruce Dern.

But the most interesting and fascinating cast member was Shea Whigham. This is a man who spent most of his career as a supporting actor now stepping up to the plate as lead actor, and doing a bang up job with it.

The drama is grimm but well played, and the action was fast and effective. I thought this movie was perfect.

When a social worker gets a little too wrapped up in his client and her dirtbag ex-con hubby comes home, things explode. It's got that made-for-tv feel.

I really feel sorry for Grillo, Munn and even Dern (who's been horrible in many other bad movies lately, but was actually good in this one) for having their names attached to this far-fetched ridiculous wannabe crime-drama-thriller pretentious mess.

Although Whigham's performance was decent, his character was cringeworthy, laughable, and annoyingly unconvincing. His James Dean wannabe look and demeanor did him zero justice, as did his unrealistic and ridiculous character's attempt to portray a social worker. The casting director needs to get fired for that call, as do the writers.

To make matters worse, there were actually three writers that came together to give us this nonsense; a (pulling out a mini-bottle out of thin-air) alcoholic chain-smoking drug-using gun-wielding emotional-baggage-carrying straight-faced low-monotonic dude-too-cool licensed city social worker? It may have worked as a comedic parody, but in this case, it was as I already mentioned, cringeworthy, laughable, and annoyingly unconvincing. Don't even get me started on the massive plot and technical issues.

The pacing was so slow with many unnecessary and long winded scenes, that the normally time-flies 91 min runtime felt like almost 3 hours. The screenplay was so dull, static and stale, I couldn't wait to get to the end. Aside from the last 10 mins of (somewhat) action, there were zero thrills in this thriller, and the drama was melodramatic in a soap-opera way.

And what was the point of the last 3+ mins of church choir singing? Then right after adding "In the United States, 250,000 children enter the foster care system every year", is an embarrassment to the foster system by portraying Whigham as a "licensed city social worker". What's the point to that message relating to this film? "Hopefully none of those 250,000 children will end up with such an unprofessional and unqualified social worker like Parker" lmao? Adding that statistic doesn't make the film any better, it makes it much worse.

One of those writers, Michele Civetta, also directed this mess. Using fish-eye lens and slow-mo scenes is something I'd expect to see in a 5th grade drama class production - from the 90's. His directing overall was amateurish at best, and he failed in directing his cast properly, with the exception of Grillo, who clearly carried his own weight perfectly without any need for cast direction. The score was ok, but the soundtrack was overbearing. I really can't think of anything redeeming about this film, it was such a disappointment.

It's a shame so much good talent was wasted in this nonsense. I'm giving this a very generous 4/10, more so out of pity for some of my favorite actors having this mess on their resume.

B movie, mediocre even by network tv standards, with an A list group of actors, maybe drawn to this project by its truly noble attempt to protect children from the idiotic behavior of the adults around them.

But, ends up Jjust a predictable, excruciatingly slow paced film.....We see all the punches coming way too far in advance; like a spiraling, slow motion plane crash....

I had never heard about the 2021 thriller "The Gateway" from writers Alex Felix Bendaña, Andrew Levitas and Michele Civetta prior to sitting down and watching it here in 2022. All I knew about it was the fact that the movie Olivia Munn and Frank Grillo on the cast list.

The storyline was actually enjoyable. Sure, it wasn't the most innovative or creative of plot concepts, but the storyline made for good entertainment, and that is what matters to me when I sit down and watch a movie. So the writers definitely put together something that worked here in "The Gateway".

The narrative was adequately paced, some slow moments and some fast moments throughout the course of the movie, so it was a pretty nice enough movie experience.

"The Gateway" does have a good cast ensemble. I am not overly familiar with Shea Whigham, but he did perform quite well in this movie, despite of having just a single grimace to put on in every single scene. So there was lacking a bit of facial expressions of emotions and such, but it seemed okay to the character, given the backstory and addiction to alcohol. Olivia Munn was definitely nicely cast and performed quite well, and it was nice to see Bruce Dern in the movie. It was a shame that Frank Grillo only had a small role in the movie, as he could have spruced it up quite a lot. Zach Avery definitely put on a noteworthy performance here.

All in all then "The Gateway" was a good movie. I was definitely entertained by it.

My rating of director Michele Civetta's 2021 movie "The Gateway" lands on a six out of ten stars.