Little Accidents

"Your testimony as you can imagine is of the utmost importance to us."

Little Accidents is Sara Colangelo's debut feature film and despite some of the issues I had with the pacing and some unexpected turns the story takes it still had some solid performances that kept me engaged with the movie. With a little more polishing Colangelo may become an important filmmaker because she does manage to deliver some well crafted scenes and interesting characters. It is a character study of a small American coal mining town that has recently experienced a fatal accident that claimed the lives of several miners. Amos Jenkins (Boyd Holbrook) is the only survivor and on the one hand he is feeling forced to testify against the executives by the families' who have lost their loved ones, and on the other, miners from the same company want him to keep quiet so they can continue to work without experiencing any setbacks. He would rather stay quiet than say anything. The blame is mostly geared towards Bill Doyle (Hosh Lucas) who is an executive of the mining company. Meanwhile he and his wife, Diane (Elizabeth Banks), are dealing with the disappearance of their son JT (Travis Tope). The only person who knows what happened to JT is a young boy named Owen (Jacob Lofland) who would rather keep the secret to himself than confess what actually happened. Owen's father was also a victim of a coal mining accident and we see the contrast between his family and the Doyle's. Once we are introduced to all these characters we begin to see how some of them overlap with each other in a small town where secrets are hard to be kept. Colangelo sets up the story pretty convincingly but once the characters begin to interact with each other there are moments that feel forced and melodramatic. There is just too much going on in the town for a film like this.

What I enjoyed the most about Little Accidents despite all the melodrama and forced interactions it introduces were the performances from the cast. Elizabeth Banks has a much more subtle performance than what we are used to seeing her in and Josh Lucas is also believable as the mining executive who is trying to keep busy at work to keep his mind off of the loss of his son. However the two stand outs in this film are Boyd Holbrook and Jacob Lofland who are internally wrestling with secrets of their own. Lofland was outstanding in MUD although most of the attention was geared towards Tye Sheridan's performance. He is the one who has gotten much better roles, but that doesn't mean Lofland should be ignored and in this film he proves he has the acting chops to carry a film.

The greatest failure of Little Accidents is that it tries to cover too much melodrama in a short period of time. Instead of focusing on one of the accidents, it introduces us to another one and shows how some of the characters overlap with each other. I didn't find the relationship between Banks and Holbrook believable and it all felt rushed. The underlying message of the film seems to be that "truth will set you free," but in the end it was all too obvious and the audience is left unrewarded for the time they had invested in the film. I found some of the camera movement a bit distracting at times, but that is my only complaint in the technical department. In the end, Little Accidents simply doesn't deliver despite an interesting premise.

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Dramas are normally not the kind of movie I'm going for so I was not expecting much before watching this movie. After seeing it I must say I'm not disappointed at all. It's certainly worth a watch. It's a movie about all kinds of accidents, guilt and remorse, coping with losses. I thought all the actors gave a good performance. The filming was not bad either, I thought it was enjoyable to watch. The storyline is entertaining enough to not get bored. It is kind of slow with not much action but that's why it's a drama and not an action movie. Nothing wrong with that if you like that genre of movie. I probably won't watch it a second time but I certainly don't regret watching it.

The actors gave decent performances and as someone who's lived in a small town, I thought they were believable in their roles. Unfortunately there just wasn't anything to the story or the movie. Prepare to be bored.

I wasn't planning to attend Little Accidents when it screened at the Seattle International Film Festival. With 450 films from which to choose, a film about a coal mining disaster sounded depressing. However, when I was sent a free pass from SIFF, I went anyway.

Not only was I was pleasantly surprised by Sara Colangelo's debut feature film, I was moved by it. Little Accidents is the type of film that stays with you long after the lights come up.

Although it is a coal mine disaster that sets the events of the film in motion, the action begins months after the accident, as Amos Jenkins (Boyd Holbrook) returns to his life in the small West Virginia town after convalescing from injuries that he sustained in the accident. He is the sole survivor.

Life is anything but normal as Amos finds himself torn between telling the truth about the cause of the accident, and keeping his mouth shut, which will dishonor his ten friends who died. If he testifies that management's cost-cutting decisions led to the disaster, the mine will be closed and his friends and family will be left without any way to feed their families.

Just as the town is beginning to deal with the loss of the miners, the son of one of the mine's managers (Josh Lucas) goes missing. Is it retaliation or a freak accident? Young Owen, played by Jacob Loftland (Mud), who is the son of a killed miner, has the answer, but he deals with his own struggle to reveal the truth.

The character-driven film follows the seemingly parallel story lines of Amos, Owen and Diane Doyle (Elizabeth Banks), the mother of the missing boy, but eventually the parallel lives begin to intertwine as they find themselves connected by fate.

The performances by everyone in this film, especially Holbrook and Loftland, are superb. A touching scene between Amos and Diane outside a convenience store nearly left me in tears.

Although I felt the relationship between Amos and Dianne could have been developed further, I was fully satisfied by the completion of the plot lines and left feeling blown away by the entire experience, which was enhanced by the attendance of the director, Colangelo.

Colangelo directed a 2010 short by the same name, which deals with issues of the working class. She wanted to set the expanded feature film in a mining community, after being moved by so many recent coal-mining accidents that she was unable to get off her mind.

One interesting piece of information that Colangelo provided was that the movie was shot in 24 days and entirely in film, in order to capture the grittiness of the subject matter. Kodak donated half of the film.

Little Accidents isn't so much a film about a coal mining disaster as it is a film about loss and how we choose to deal with the tragic events that occur in our lives. Of all the films I saw at SIFF this year, this is my favorite.

The film is set to be released in January 2015. Go see it!

I appreciated this little film, good atmosphere and acting too. But in the genre I preferred STEEL COUNTRY, also set in a small town where every one knows each other, also with a gripping characters symphony. But I could never dive deep enough in this story, I still wonder exactly why. something, a little, tiny link is missing; maybe it is just before my nose. Maybe because of the nowhere ending, maybe...But I recommend it.