This film is a visual bomb. The photography is beautiful, the shots are creative and original, and the soundtrack by Beck and Moby is fantastic. All is said, this is a great music video. The only thing is that it supposed to be a feature film.
This is the first one by Fredrik Bond, who, guess what, did a video recording of a concert by Moby.
The screenplay is a cock-and-bull story. Charlie Countryman (Shia LaBeouf) decides to go to Bucharest because the ghost of his dead mother (Melissa Leo) told him to go. Charlie has indeed the power to talk to dead people and they are quite numerous at the beginning of the film. He meets in Romania, Gabi (Evan Rachel Wood) whom he falls in love with but who turns out to be married to a mobster, Nigel (Mads Mikkelsen). He moves in with two English men who have the brilliant idea to make a lot of dumb things at very dangerous people’s place. A lot of visual scenes that are supposed to «provocative ” put together without any emotional links played by an uneven cast. Shia LaBeouf gives the impression of watching himself act. He explained that for the scene of tripping under acids he actually took drugs to do his job the most seriously possible. In that case, why not get drunk for scenes of drinking, making love for real and get hurt for the torture scenes? This might be a good method for him since it was his best performance but where is the merit if the scenes are not actually acted?
Mads Mikkelsen is convincing in the part of the gangster but we almost regret to see him in that movie.
Evan Rachel Wood is still crazy charismatic but does not convince us to have empathy for her character.
Moreover, we have the opportunity to see Ron Weasley aka Rupert Grint filthy, high on drugs that feels like a replica of Shia LaBeouf.
There is potential in the directing but is the director really able to understand that a good story is equally important or even more crucial to a movie than the visual aspect of it? You wonder …
