My Son

It's a movie that may hold promise, but eventually falls.

The movie starts well, with a lot of intrigue and suspense, but then it becomes very absurd due to the conveniences of the story, very predictable and because the way things are resolved so absurdly and easily. There is a lack of character development as you can't empathize with them or the situations they go through, it seems that the characters don't learn anything after going through very difficult situations, the acting doesn't help much either as at a certain point they become exaggerated and very dramatic. There is also no good development of the antagonists, and the constant camera blurs ruin this movie more. The locations where it was filmed are very beautiful, it is understood that several scenes are very limited or fall short due to the low budget, the story is not very original, but I think that the important thing is its execution, something that this film does not fully achieve.

This movie builds a good mystery but it gets ruined as the plot progresses and when its twist appears, giving way to a not-so-exciting and predictable ending, turning this movie into something very generic and without much innovation.

My Son is an improvised child abduction thriller. It is a remake of a French movie called Mon Garçon.

Edmond Murray (James McAvoy) frequently works abroad a consultant for an oil company. His ex wife Joan (Claire Foy) calls him back to Scotland when Ethan his 7 year old son is snatched from a campsite.

Edmond suspects Joan's new boyfriend to be behind the abduction as he behave strangely. In fact Edmond beats him up and the police arrest him.

The man in charge of the investigation Inspector Roy (Gary Lewis) cannot find a substantial lead and is soon taken off the case. Edmond though does find a trail through some mobile phone footage. One that leads to a child abduction ring.

The movie has the scuzzy feel of 8MM with elements of Taken as Edmond is out to get revenge with whatever he can lay his hands on. A blowtorch in one scene.

The main selling point of My Son is that McAvoy had to improvise his script. He was only given a basic outline of his character and the plot. Although I presume he took a sneaky peak at the French version.

It does give the movie an underwritten feeling. Like the story is not fully developed and it shows in the final product.

... there's just not a lot in this film to become emotionally or intellectually intrigued... the two leads do a decent job with what they're given, but overall it's really nothing more than how most people are rating it.

'My Son' is an ok film for a one-time watch. It looks neat, McAvoy is consistently good, there are some tense scenes (although very dark), and the score is memorable.

Yet it's still 5/10 because the story is just too loose. More than half of the things they establish go nowhere while the resolution just turns up from nowhere. So many plot threads just get abandoned constantly taking you out of the film, there's nothing to grasp on to. It's ok to mislead your viewers if you do it in a clever way, provide hints, well, at least something. Here it's just random. Some of the scenes also felt stretched out to meet the required run-time, I have no other explanation, lots of walking, running, sitting, driving...

The ending credits also mention that this is an adaptation of Mon garçon, a French film of the same name from 2017. But how can it be an adaptation if it's directed by the same guy? It's like he just made the same film twice, and the first one isn't much better probably because it's rated even lower.

It's watchable, but only if there is nothing else to see.

James McAvoy was fantastic as always but I was left asking a few questions in the end. Aspects of the plot were only hinted at but not explored properly.