Checked out the new sun-baked neo noire suspense film Serenity. Actually, I went to see it twice… first time, I turned into an old man and slept through an hour of it… and then I went home and read some reviews that expressed how weird the twist was. I missed the twist… so I went again. And there’s a twist all right. Ooh baby. A weird, misbegotten one that was at least the the last hour of the flick. I slept. A lot.
So Serenity stars Mathew McConaughey as a boat captain in the Caribbean. He takes tourists out to catch big fish… but really wants to catch the big tuna that keeps eluding him (which he names Justice). When he isn’t making money as a cap’n, he’s male prostitute, selling his bod to Diane Lane. When a platinum blonde (Anne Hathaway) from out of the past arrives on the island, she asks him to take her husband out on his boat and make sure he doesn’t come back (for ten million dollars).
That’s the opening of the film… and from the start, there’s hints of something… weird… going on. A fastidious, nerdy guy in a suit keeps showing up too late and missing McConaughey’s boat. What he represents is the big twist that I missed the first time. And I’m not gonna spoil it.
But when the probability wave function of what COULD be happening collapses and we learn exactly what IS happening, it’s underwhelming, weird, and introduces too many questions. The thing is, if they had gone with a number of alternatives to the weirdness, it would have worked. It’s just THIS particular twist that seems silly and doesn’t work.
You can’t help but wonder how such good actors would agree to do the flick. It’s written and directed by the same guy and I can believe this is HIS passion project, but how they got McConaughey, Jason Clarke, Anne Hathaway, Djimon Honsou, and Diane Lane to agree is a mystery. Unless they were told, “How about a Caribbean vacation, we make a movie, and we pay you.” I’d be in that movie, come to think.
The sad thing is, the opening 30-40 minutes is a modern film noire set in the white-hot baking day of the Caribbean. It’s full of cliches of the genre, it’s melodramatic, and a little bit sexy. And it was fun. I was grinning. No, it wasn’t original necessarily and ultimately McConaughey is trying to catch a big tuna… but it worked for what it was. But it falls apart at the twist.
But, hey, give the movie credit. It starts out as a potboiler noire and turns into a completely different genre. I give it credit for taking a risk and having an original idea at least. I just wish it had worked. It’s kind of a disaster and isn’t ultimately so-bad-its-good in the final hour. It gets a little dull and drab in between questions of the logic. Probably worth a skip unless you just want to see how wrong-headed a movie can get while trying to be creative.
Score: