Solace

Hello, and welcome back to Today at the Cinema.

As usual, I will present to you a review of a film that I’ve watched. Though… honestly, I didn’t know how to review this one. It was a bit blurry yet confusing film.

I’m sure I’ve told this for a lot of time, since I’ve never tried watching any trailers or reviews on films, I tend to just go blindly. I guess, for this one…at least I should have read or watched other reviews.

Though I don’t know whether that would help…

For today, I’d review Solace. I have seen the poster of the film for quite long. When I knew it has Anthony Hopkins in the film, I thought it would be an interesting one. But I guess having a big name actor such as Anthony Hopkins didn’t really help this film. Instead, they just wasted him away.

So, what’s the plot of this film?

Hmm…you know…that’s a good question, what IS the plot?

In all seriousness, even the plot of the film was confusing. The story is about some psychic doctor who helps out the police to solve some mysterious serial murder case, by using his precognition power. That’s the gist…but in practice it was just utterly a messy plot.

To be honest, I think the plot was interesting. It does have this huge potential to be a fine script. Unfortunately, it was done poorly. Either due to many things that the plot wanted to tell, poor script writing or the inexperienced director who can’t handle such a plot, the whole story has turned into such a mess. Numerous plot holes were scattered in almost every scenes of the film, from the start until the end, without any efforts to make them clear.

The other thing that made the plot seems cluttered was the phase from each scene. If you watch other films, you can’t actually see how the scenes were shot and edited. Every scene was sewn together nicely. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen in this film. Each scene was almost like cut and paste, without any editing touches at all. So, you can actually feel the cut every time the scene changed, and it was really bothersome. Other than that, the whole film’s timeline, in some ways, was screwed as well. It felt as if everything happened in just one to two days, since there weren’t many changes in the days. This might be because of the editing, or perhaps it could also be the scripts that got changed too much, either way it just makes the film’s plot and even timeline got messed up.

The main character’s personality was also a big question mark. There is just inconsistency in the character’s characteristic. In some point, they said the guy was unstable, weird, or something, yet as the film went on…you couldn’t really see this instability that they claimed. All you got was a stoic man who might more like dead-inside, rather than unstable or whatever the film wanted you to believe. It was just confusing to understand it. This also happened to the villain character who seems suffering in background lackness. I think the problem is worse for the villain, since it makes his motivation seems weak. If only they could put more time to introduce the character….

Talking about act, I feel kind of sad seeing how wasted Anthony Hopkins in here. The guy is a legendary actor who’s well known for his good acting. Yet in this film, he acted very weirdly. It felt as if even HE was confused in how to act as the main character (and honestly, I don’t blame the guy. With how inconsistent the script was, there wasn’t much to work at). On the other hand, the villain’s act was quite okay, despite the background lackness, but still it was not good enough. As for the other characters, they were okay as well. It’s just unfortunate for them to be the other victims of muddled script.

Ow, and don’t get me started with the directing. I rarely comment much on the directing of a film, since usually for me unless it’s really good or really bad then there’s no need for me to give any comments. As for this film, I just have to. First, it would be the amateurish shots. There are some amateurish shots in some parts of the film that bugged me. One in particular was in the first part of the film, where the shots that were taken were shaky, and also in one part where you can actually see it how the camera zooms in (as if it were taken by some newbie cameraman). If it were indie/student film, I’m fine with it; but this is Hollywood film, with big stars and big budget, so it’s not fine at all.

Other than that, I dislike the whole precognition visions that they added in the film. There were a lot of them…and all of them were just confusing, and to the part where it got annoying to see them. You may perhaps call it artsy or sophisticated, but I would call it rubbish since the whole visions WERE just rubbish. They didn’t really give out any meanings, more like some random pictures to make them look arty. Just another unneeded thing for the film.

Anyway, I should stop now. I’ve ranted long enough, and also I think I’ve used all the synonyms of confused/confusing, weird, and messy that I know of. It is unfortunate honestly, because as I said before it has a good premise. It just felt that they have so many things that they want to give, yet so little time. Maybe if it were a TV series instead a big screen film, this film would be better. Lastly, I won’t suggest you to spend your money and watch this in the cinema, if you’re curious. Just wait until you can watch on DVD or even on Netflix.

 

Today at the Cinema #11

Solace <2/5>