Watch Before and After For Free

Sadly Over-hyped

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I'm probably repeating some of the issues already put forward concerning this film. The father in this movie is an utter ass. He acts only in his own self interest. If such a creep exists, we can see why the kid is a bit messed up. The plot follows the discovery of a young girl's body and a link to a young man (the son) who is connected to her. Once the father, played by Liam Neeson, goes bananas and starts destroying evidence, the die is cast. Meryl Streep's doctor/mother tries to look at things in a sane way, but she is constantly overpowered by her brutish husband. She is a realist and knows what needs to be done. The father makes it so much worse than it could have been that options are really limited. Also, Alfred Molina's lawyer role is so full of it. He chomps on a sandwich while talking about the most serious issue in the world. This is supposed to fill us with confidence (he may be eccentric but I'll bet he's really good). The script and the formulation of the events in this film, not to mention much of the acting just doesn't cut it very well.

How you could take Meryl Streep, Liam Nelson and Alfred Molina and only produce a half baked turkey like this is beyond me. But they did. The plot, as serpentine as it was, could have made sense. But it plays against human nature a good part of the time. Or maybe it was just the dialogue that wasn't human. I plugged along with this tired play only to see how it ended. It did. The idea that a 16 year old could get himself into so much trouble is not unbelievable. And after killing someone, even accidentally, one would probably become panic stricken. But I think it's human nature to try and hide the crime, not just leave all the clues and drive your family car home with blood in the trunk, including the mysterious bloody glove (where did that come from?) As for the father, he should stick with art. By trying to hide what he assumes is his son's crime, he only makes it worse. Meryl is a mother and she plays that part well. In fact she is the only believable character. Julia Weldon must be well connected because she can't act and that was a major drawback. The dichotomy of whether one should support family at all costs or seek the truth for all involved ( for the sake of society) is not new. As an artist, if he were from Bulgaria or some such country, Nelson's character might seem more believable. Everything is corrupt there. But here, we still assume that the innocent may get a fair shake, in spite of 6 years of the current regime's attempts to take away all rights of anyone they don't like. Never been a big fan of Furlong and his whining seems to be nearly continual in anything he does. Is there a casting call for whiners? There was a kernel of an idea in this movie, but without the proper care, it just became nutty.

While not a terrible movie it has a few serious problems. The problems start with the casting. Edward Furlong is cast to play the 16 year old son of parents played by Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson, but at age 16 he appears to be roughly five inches shorter than Streep and is utterly dwarfed by Neeson. Furlong looks more like he was their 12 year old son than their 16 year old son.Next problem is that certain points you need to catch at the beginning of the film simply slip by far to fast to catch. In a murder mystery or something with major plot twists that might be tolerable, but not in your ordinary family drama.But to me the most troubling problem (and if you are determined to see the movie regardless you might not want to read on, because this will give away most of the movie) is that it simply does not make sense.The story is Furlong has pulled off the road with his girlfriend and parked in the snow, gets stuck, they argue and tussle with each other, with him pushing her and accidentally causing her to fall face-first on the car jack. He then flees. She's found, rushed to the hospital and dies. The movie then deals with the family struggle of how to deal with this in court. Getting the kids' story out takes at least half the movie and by the time it gets out things are moving fast and little things, like making sense, get lost in the wake. If Furlong and the girlfriend TOGETHER had been absolutely unable to get the car out of the snow, and the deep rut he had made in it, it makes no sense that after she is spread out on the ground and unable to help he then gets the the car out by himself -- that is the kind of inconsistency any prosecuting attorney would have latched onto, and which any defense attorney would have seen as a major problem in court (I make these comments as a criminal defense attorney).But that's not the only problem with the kid's story. It was supposedly an accident. He cared about her. He never wanted to hurt her. And yet after she is hurt he cleans up the scene, gets that stuck car out of there, leaves, she is found and is STILL ALIVE long enough for an ambulance to reach her, get her to an emergency room and have a serious effort to save her life before she dies on the table in the ER. The entire issue of her having BEEN ALIVE and left to die is ignored. Not mentioned once by him, his family, the girl's grieving mother, his defense attorney, the prosecution or the judge who heard the case. It is as if the director forgot that in the second scene in the movie we see Meryly Streep, a doctor in the film, called to the ER to help with efforts to save the girl, long before we know her son was involved in the girl's death. The scene leaves no doubt (I went back and watched it a second time to be sure because the inconsistency seemed so glaring) that the girl was still alive when she reached the ER.But she was left to die by the kid for whom we are supposed to feel sympathy.Not only are there problems with the issue not having been properly addressed by any of the characters who would have addressed it, the fact that we need to feel sympathy for the kid is a problem. Easy to feel sympathy for him in having his life thrown into chaos as a result of an accident.... hard to feel sympathy when he would have had to have left his girlfriend there to die, and when in cleaning up the scene he would have had to have had enough contact with her (she fell on the car jack, and he removed the jack and put it back in the trunk of the car) that he certainly should have noticed she was still alive.Despite strong performances from the actors and good cinematography, the movie was a bit disappointing because of direction, casting and the script.

.Spoilers.There was a lot of good things about this movie. It was a compelling and interesting story right from the beginning. The acting was seemingly well played...... until the third act. What on earth happened to the direction of this film? I have not read the book, so I don't know if it has the same direction as this movie played out... but the third act did not even seem like the same movie. The acting took a nose-dive, and the melodrama began flowing freely like ipecac down the throat.From the beginning, I thought: Hey, sure, it's plausible that the Father wanted to save his son, and that these goofy things with the cover-up, and the family binding together to uphold the lie, were certainly no stretch of reason. Then we get to mom's, and Eddie's character's confession, and the whole thing is a puke-fest of gotchas and ridiculous moral claims about right and wrong which are, at best, pointless opposing claims about whether right or wrong and the law are the same thing.Don't misread me, though. I really enjoyed the beginning of this movie. I just hated the end.6/10