The Ticket

"If you leave, you can't come back."

How would you react when you lose your eyesight at a young age, leaving you the rest of your life depending on others, never having seen your wife and child, with no idea how your environment looks like and working as a blind in a Call center for a real estate company (in other words, a hopeless job). And then one day you wake up and you realize you can see again. I'm convinced that it'll be a shock. Finally you can see how attractive your wife is and at the same time find out she's a real control freak. You discover you have a cute little son who's being bullied at school for some time and you're wife never told you about it. And the house you live in looks quite dusty and old fashioned with that flower wallpaper. And on top of that, you are satisfied because you see a pretty attractive guy when looking in the mirror. Time to shape up and become the better flirt, I'd say.

This all sounds quite plausible. But James (Dan Stevens) turning into an arrogant, egocentric jerk who only wants to enrich his personal life and get that promotion as soon as possible so that he can improve his materialistic life, felt a little exaggerated to me. Sorry, but the first thing I would do was to go to a zoo, an amusement park or the cinema for example, so I could admire what I missed all those years. But no. James rather starts an ego trip, forsaking those who supported him all these years. A beautiful example of someone who exchanged his physical blindness for a total emotional blindness.

The question is, of course, whether this was a natural healing or a divine intervention. James' daily prayer, with him thanking the Lord for his rich life full of well-meaning people, perhaps finally paid off. Maybe that's the reason why he came up with this luminous idea to convince people in church to sell their homes right now and get rid of everlasting debts. In his sales talk, he always uses the story about the person who desperately wants to win the lottery and prays for it every day. But he never buys a lottery ticket. I think the message is as follows : if you want to change your life, you also need to act in such a way that this change is possible. In my opinion, James is convinced he has won that winning ticket, after piously praying for years. But the actions he undertakes afterwards, are dramatically exaggerated in my opinion.

And how unlikely the turnaround is at the beginning, the more unlikely the turnaround is at the end. Eventually, it seemed the winning ticket was only valid temporarily. Or was it a divine punishment because James let the dark side of his personality dominate? Anyway, I saw the outcome coming a mile away (pun not intended). Personally, I thought the footage where nothing was to be seen, the most fascinating. An impression of how James looked at the world. A black spot with stroboscopic light effects and misty reflections. A successful demonstration of how a blind person experiences his sight. The most emotional moment was the turning point in the dusty dance cafe where James dances one last time with his wife Sam (Malin Akerman) intimately. Despite the artistic character, the many dead moments and the slow pace, Dan Stevens and Malin Akerman know how to give a lively and fascinating performance. "The ticket" won't be a blockbuster like "Beauty and the Beast", but will show a glimpse of Dan Stevens' versatility.

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We all ask ourselves if given the chance would we reach out and grab that lottery ticket if given to us? The idea of everything being handed to us after enduring for so long. Ido Fluk and Sharon Mashihi understand this and perhaps manipulate this into greed and lust - Perhaps? "The Ticket" presents this question, but like most thought provoking questions - This film has no answer for you.

Directed Ido Fluk, from a script written by Fluk and Sharon Mashihi. "The Ticket" stars Dan Stevens (The Guest) as James, a man blind from youth, with a comfortable life with his wife Sam (Malin Åkerman) and son Jonah (Skylar Gaertner). One day he regains his vision discovering he's not happy or contempt with his life - grabbing a promotion at work, leaves his wife for Jessica (Kerry Bishé) an employee where he works, and mistreating his friend Bob (Oliver Platt) one of James's blind co- workers.

Dan Stevens as always is fierce and enigmatic as James. Stevens is careful not to have you sympathize with James and the choices he makes along the way - But to ponder on each choice and wonder what's driving him. See, like each character in "The Ticket" (And there aren't many) they all have something driving them - something they want. Sam is fine and happy with going dancing, rather than an eloquent restaurant. She's also tired and Malin shows this beautifully. James, however, wants more, and Stevens never slows down giving us a moment to blame James for his choices.

Director Ido Flunk beautifully directs, with a unique visual flare centering around James's point of view. Where the film falls would be the predictability of its plot and lack of motivation for its characters.

"The Ticket" is a well made film with a deeply moving performance from Stevens.

In "The Ticket" we get to meet a blind man, who regains his vision in the beginning of the film. When he does, he starts to pay more attention to his exterior, starts to buy fancier things and basically becomes an asshole.

The film was directed by Ido Fluk in a visually fine way, but in other ways lesser good. The shots looked nice, with some good use of shadow. They also play around with the use of focus and lighting, which really fits the film. The color grading was nice and it reminded me quite a lot of the film "Demolition", staring Jake Gyllenhaal, which was a notable better film than this one. But it did make sense that the film would look very good, because the main character is able to see again, so the world must look gorgeous to him, which the film succeeded at doing. I liked what they did in the beginning of the film: they put us in complete darkness, with only the voices of characters in the background. From that moment we know that we're seeing things from the perspective of Dan Stevens' character: blind. But slowly the light starts to come through the iris of Stevens, and we feel how he regains his sight. They really sold me on that opening scene, but what was to come, was quite disappointing in comparison to that. What the director tried to do was to give the film a deeper meaning, which I thoroughly understand. It's an independent film and it wants to draw attention, so why not do it by making the film a bit odd, and by having it have a deeper meaning. This deeper meaning though, wasn't as deep as it wants to be. It's pretty obvious from the get-go, namely: when man is granted something big, it's doomed to fail. The film also does get boring pretty fast. The way characters speak in a very soft manner, the soft colors and the slow soundtrack all made the film feel longer than it was and made it feel very boring.

The acting wasn't a flaw, though. It was one of the best parts of the film even. Dan Stevens, who played the main character, has proved since 2014 in "The Guest" that he's a wonderful actor. Since then he's only been growing. This year he was phenomenal in "Legion" and in this film to he really sold it. The kid actor, Skylar Gaertner too was pretty good, just not as good as Dan Stevens, as he overshadows quite a lot of the cast. Skylar Gaertner played the son of Dan Stevens and there was a fun dynamic between the two of them. Someone else who was pretty good is Oliver Platt, who played the blind friend of James (Dan Stevens). The rest of the supporting cast also did quite a good job, but just like the kid actor they were overshadowed by the wonderful acting of Dan Stevens.

The main premise was good, but not well enough explored, which is quite a shame, because it all sounds so interesting. They only bring it up to create some tension between Oliver Platt and Dan Stevens, because Platt is still blind, whereas Stevens has regained sight. They glance over the regaining sight, which I would've liked to see a more in depth approach to. The screenplay by the way was also written by the director, Ido Fluk. I like when directors do this, because it shows the dedication that they put into this film, and it shows in the final result. I liked that they evolve Dan Stevens' character, but I don't like how they do it. We get introduced to James when he regains his vison, it was a good scene, but due to this we don't get to know him when he was blind, because when he regains his sight he turns into a total asshole and I don't really get the motivation for becoming one. So I believe that if we got introduced to him earlier, we got to sympathize with him, so we later could understand why he changed and by doing that the development wouldn't be as abrupt as it was now. But only the part where he turns into an asshole was handled badly, the other developments were more subtle and made me care more for James. The other characters weren't highlighted as much as Stevens, which is really understandable, because the film is told from his perspective and the other characters really don't need any development, so I found no problem in that.

In the end "The Ticket" was an OK film that's worth your time. The deeper lying message was pretty obvious, but the visuals totally make up for it. The acting was wonderful, but at times the character motivation is lacking. That's why this film gets a 6.5/10 from me.

A film with many details that lead nowhere, All movie scenes are predictable - and became to me a very slow paced melodrama that, I didn't really enjoy. the dialogue between the characters is dry, not developing, heavy. In general this movie is stuck in a slow is neither interesting nor intriguing.

The Ticket (2016)

A serious movie, and sincere. The obvious thrust is the poster lines, and this is no spoiler—a man who has been blind for a decade gains his sight back. The metaphor here (and repeated throughout) is that it's like winning the lottery (hence the title of the film).

Now what?

Slowly (too slowly for most of us) the man goes through several broad phases as he reassesses his world, both personally and physically (viusally) around him. The euphoria, the wanting more, the doubts, the challenges, each section is simple (to the point of simplistic, I think) but heartfelt. The leading character (played by Dan Stevens) is compelling enough as a regular guy swept up with things bigger than most of us encounter.

It's maybe unfair to say this isn't enough—but it isn't. It's a lot, but there needs to be other layers, complications of plot, but also nuances of feeling that someone in this situation would experience. It would not and could not be an easy arc from one zone to another. Disruption should be really ruinous and ecstatic, not a dull slow ride.

Also, and an odd comment but needed to be made—the audio is weird. A lot of the film is murmured, as if people are conversing their inner best. But much of the time a gentle music also plays and it's just plain hard to hear! Mood triumphs over content, but it's not enough.