Review and news hub for movies, music and video games

Movie:		6.0
Picture:		6.0
Sound:		7.0
Extras:		3.0
Score:		6.0

Director(s):	Erick Zonca
Writer(s):	Erick Zonca
Starring:	Aidan Gould • Horacio Garcia, Rojas • Kate del Castillo • Saul Rubinek • Tilda Swinton
Genre:	Crime Thriller
Release Date:	August 18, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	DVD - $19.99
Amazon:

One of the unwritten rules of the crime genre is that the more pathetic and desperate your perpetrator is, the worse things will invariably work out for them, and as the shambolic, self-centered drunk at the center of French helmer Erick Zonca’s overwrought kidnap caper, Tilda Swinton’s titular protagonist is so low she is practically underground. But having forced his audience to endure her antics for the better part of 150 minutes Zonca decapitates the story with an ending so arbitrary that it robs the viewer of the payoff they have waited so patiently (being the operative word) to see.

A spiteful alcoholic, Julia crashes around the remnants of her life from one blackout drunk f--k to another with any random stranger who will refill her glass. Her only friend at this point is Mitch (an underused Saul Rubinek), who has been bribing her with rent money (which she then spends) to go to AA meetings (that she then sleeps through). Feigning interest outside one such gathering she runs into Elena (Kate del Castillo), a somewhat deluded Mexican woman engaged in a futile battle with her wealthy father-in-law over access to her son, Tom (Aiden Gould), the father of whom is dead.

Having carefully nurtured a harebrained scheme to kidnap Tom, Elena enlists Julia in the crucial role of abductor with the promise of a big payday. But upon discovery that Elena doesn’t in fact have the money, Julia elects to hold the boy herself and collect from the grandfather directly, a situation that quickly escalates out of all control. Let’s start with the good, Swinton’s performance astonishes as the incredibly arrogant, unlikable Julia, a portrait of faded beauty ravaged by the bottle, whose unjustified sense of entitlement governs every despicable action. But it’s a performance largely wasted amidst an undisciplined story stretched beyond breaking point and muddied by lazy contrivance that values verite over characterization.

For Zonca it really is a case of ‘kill your darlings,’ as the film steadily dissolves into a maelstrom of repetitive beats, stuttering character development, and redundant interludes. Having carefully established several solid supporting characters Zonca then discards them without reason, leaving plot points dangling and unresolved. A set-up involving Julia being in the hole to some shady gangbangers is just dropped dead. Mitch appears simply as a matter of convenience when Julia needs to trade a little exposition with someone and we never learn anything of his relationship to her that would suggest why he is the last person alive to still give a damn. Most wasteful of all, Elena, whose childlike mind masks a propensity for wild, volatile rage, spends the entire picture unseen on the fringes of the story.

What we’re left with is essentially a road movie as Julia, who is nowhere near as clever as she thinks she is and quickly gives herself away to the police, is forced to take Tom and run as she frantically tries to figure a way to get her hands on the ransom without getting caught. Spread across highways, motels, and rest stops, are a series of dialogue heavy scenes between Julia and Tom, with young Aiden Gould (barely eleven-years-old at the time of filming) unsurprisingly exposed as a little out of his thesping depth.

Once we cross the border into Mexico Zonca doesn’t even bother paying lip service to logic anymore. A kidnapping ring can be cracked by the simple act of following ten steps behind them through the streets of Tijuana. A character from earlier in the story is crow-barred back in as a translator between Julia and some brutish thugs; thugs who later seem to speak perfect English when said character is no longer around. And as the film lumbers towards its unlikely climax you’ll struggle to find yourself caring.

As a taut, 90-minute character study about an embittered, self-destructive addict fumbling her way to something approaching a conscience this story would have worked well. At 2 ½ hours its languid pacing diminishes the impact of a handful of very effective sequences that trimmed off their surrounding flab might have made for a more affecting drama.

DVD Bonus Features

A handful of deleted scenes (the last thing this film needs), along with the theatrical trailer and a selection of additional trailers for other Magnolia releases.