Tag Archives: Abbie Cornish

The Snoozual Suspects

Detained

by Daniel Baldwin

Midbudget movies used to be Hollywood’s bread and butter for decades, especially procedural thrillers. They were all the rage in the ‘90s and ‘00s in particular. The Silence of the LambsKiss the GirlsThe Usual SuspectsDouble JeopardyPrimal FearThe FirmTwisted. If it involved Thomas Harris, John Grisham, and/or Ashley Judd, it was practically a guaranteed smash.

At some point in the 2010s, studios drifted away from such fare, in favor of a core focus on blockbuster franchises. Fans of such films were forced to get their fix almost exclusively from network television and low budget independent features. They filled the void that Hollywood left behind and one of the latest entries taking up residence in that gap is Detained.

Co-writer/director Felipe Mucci’s Detained centers around a confused and disoriented woman (Abbie Cornish) who awakens in a rundown police station. She doesn’t know why she is there and cannot remember what has happened to her recently. The two detectives (Laz Alonso, Moon Bloodgood) that are interrogating her are not much help. They’re more interested in beating around the bush and playing mind games with her to see if they can luck into a confession. What follows is a conversational game of cat & mouse between not only our lead and the detectives, but the other denizens of the dilapidated jail as well. Who will come out ahead as secrets are revealed and alliances are shifted? Well, you’ll have to watch it for yourself to find that out.

While Detained might fill a cinematic void created by bad Hollywood decisionmaking, it does not fill it well. Visually, the film is in line with many of the television procedurals within the genre: well-made, but very paint-by-numbers. It is also punching above its weight in the casting department, which helps smooth over a lot of its dialogue deficiencies.

Unfortunately, not even the likes of Cornish, Alonso, Bloodgood, or the ever-underrated Breeda Wool can overcome a narrative that is chock full of nearly every single twisty-turny mystery cliché imaginable. Even the most dedicated fan of this subgenre is likely to be five steps ahead of the story throughout the film’s running time. What is meant to be an engaging thriller that keeps viewers guessing is far likelier to have them checking the time to see how soon it will wrap-up.

More Like Amateur

The Virtuoso

by Hope Madden

Hey, Anthony Hopkins just won his second Oscar! The octogenarian was not the favorite, but there’s no denying that, after dozens of phoned-in near-cameos, he landed the role of a lifetime and gave a performance to match.

So, back to phoned-in near-cameos, I guess.

In director Nick Stagliano’s The Virtuoso, Hopkins plays The Mentor, an enigmatic man in a shadowy office. Mentor to whom, you ask? To The Virtuoso (Anson Mount), of course. He’s one of those “put my black ops training to good use responding only to this one guy by phone who sends me on my missions and otherwise I am utterly, stoically alone” kind of guys.

The Virtuoso is a man of few words—except in voiceover. In voiceover you cannot get him to shut up, his monotone musings on scheduling, technique, blah blah blah so wearying you can’t help but suddenly, brightly realize all over again what an absolute masterpiece American Psycho was.

One hit goes well. One hit goes south. Then we dig in for the next hit, where all the voiceover details about planning, timing, persistence and detail go straight out the window.

From here, we’re with The Virtuoso step by step as he bungles this and misunderstands that and misfires his weapon over here and makes poor decisions over there. It might make a half-decent comedy if it weren’t played so, so, so seriously.

Stagliano and writer James C. Wolf aim for neo-noir hipness but miss the mark by a wide distance.

Mount does what he can and almost generates interest as his character practices making normal people faces in the mirror before going out in public. Hopkins is saddled with nonsensical speeches meant to suggest his deadened soul. He doesn’t try too hard to make anything of it.

Abbie Cornish does try, bringing a flash of human interest as The Waitress. But no amount of homespun charm can save a movie this dumb.