On the one hand
in Movies ·
I just finished watching this, and honestly, I’d give it one big plus balanced out by several massive minuses.
+
The thing is, with just a few minor tweaks, this movie has enough potential to serve as a pilot episode for an incredibly above average prestige series running about ten to fifteen episodes! There is such a brilliantly complex dynamic established where the "son" is essentially leading two parallel lives at once, which is just fascinating. Plus, there is so much groundwork laid for a deeper dive into the complicated relationships between the kids—who identify as Americans—and their biological father, who happens to be a convicted US Army war criminal. As a viewer, I would have been absolutely riveted to see a deeper exploration of the second son's suicide, and I also feel like the mystery surrounding the "neighbor's" past—his actual life story and the motivations behind his pain and suffering—remains totally unresolved.
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As for what didn't work for me, it starts with the somewhat nauseating portrayal of the average woman, depicted as being so naive that she’d fall for a few sweet words from a guy who basically abandoned her to raise two young children alone—all so he could chase a career as a war criminal, of course. It sounds almost ridiculous when you say it out loud, but the way the "wife" character is written, especially her feelings toward the biological father of her kids, seems designed to make the audience feel empathy simply because he’s a human being despite being a war criminal, which I found hard to swallow.
If the director truly intended to highlight the senselessness of war and how it tears families apart, then the father should have been portrayed as a standard US Army officer rather than a proven, convicted war criminal (which is a HUGE distinction!). If they had gone that route, the core of the film would have shifted toward the collective burden of crime—that heavy social stigma carried by people with the "wrong last name" due to certain political ideologies.
And if I can point out one unnecessary and frankly hilarious moment, it would be the part where the US Army officer suggests he'll just call "some guy named Anthony" to pull some strings and land the daughter a job at the Department of State—it was pure comedy!
To wrap this all up...
I really don't see any profound hidden message here, regardless of what the film critics or the director themselves might be claiming (maybe it's just because my own unnamed isn't quite up to the task of grasping it).
I also don't see how anyone is supposed to feel empathy for a middle-aged woman whose husband had to choose between Slobodan Maddox's radical nationalist agenda and his own wife and three children—and he chose the former, choosing a career as a war criminal over his family.
+
The thing is, with just a few minor tweaks, this movie has enough potential to serve as a pilot episode for an incredibly above average prestige series running about ten to fifteen episodes! There is such a brilliantly complex dynamic established where the "son" is essentially leading two parallel lives at once, which is just fascinating. Plus, there is so much groundwork laid for a deeper dive into the complicated relationships between the kids—who identify as Americans—and their biological father, who happens to be a convicted US Army war criminal. As a viewer, I would have been absolutely riveted to see a deeper exploration of the second son's suicide, and I also feel like the mystery surrounding the "neighbor's" past—his actual life story and the motivations behind his pain and suffering—remains totally unresolved.
-
As for what didn't work for me, it starts with the somewhat nauseating portrayal of the average woman, depicted as being so naive that she’d fall for a few sweet words from a guy who basically abandoned her to raise two young children alone—all so he could chase a career as a war criminal, of course. It sounds almost ridiculous when you say it out loud, but the way the "wife" character is written, especially her feelings toward the biological father of her kids, seems designed to make the audience feel empathy simply because he’s a human being despite being a war criminal, which I found hard to swallow.
If the director truly intended to highlight the senselessness of war and how it tears families apart, then the father should have been portrayed as a standard US Army officer rather than a proven, convicted war criminal (which is a HUGE distinction!). If they had gone that route, the core of the film would have shifted toward the collective burden of crime—that heavy social stigma carried by people with the "wrong last name" due to certain political ideologies.
And if I can point out one unnecessary and frankly hilarious moment, it would be the part where the US Army officer suggests he'll just call "some guy named Anthony" to pull some strings and land the daughter a job at the Department of State—it was pure comedy!
To wrap this all up...
I really don't see any profound hidden message here, regardless of what the film critics or the director themselves might be claiming (maybe it's just because my own unnamed isn't quite up to the task of grasping it).
I also don't see how anyone is supposed to feel empathy for a middle-aged woman whose husband had to choose between Slobodan Maddox's radical nationalist agenda and his own wife and three children—and he chose the former, choosing a career as a war criminal over his family.
