Slingshot (2005)

Just perfect...

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The dramatic end (Ashley confesses that he loves Taylor) is nice and reduce the nonsense feeling a little bit as it justifies at least part of the craziness. Though, the beginning is bad and most of the movie is HORRIBLE. Indeed, what starts badly worsens a lot, specially when the plot changes its path with the introduction of Ash's lover's daughter. Many events in the story are not credible, almost as impossible as the dialogs. It is hard to decide what is worse: the dialogs or the soundtrack. The affair of Ash and Karen could be better developed, but how the hell her daughter April dated him in that situation? The two main characters, the immature, sexist, violent rascals, childhood friends, who steal seduced older women, are somewhat well developed, but the same may not be said about other characters. Karen's friend started and finished her affair with Taylor in a blink. Fast Bobby is an even emptier character. To resume: this is a very bad film in spite of some actors who acted well.

They had the bones of a really good story, here: two guys, more than best friends. More than brothers, more than lovers, they are each others sole support system, like twins conjoined by emotions instead of biology. What happens when a girl comes along that threatens to cut them apart?Too much is included here that's not integral to that story: >they aren't just thieves, their *gigolo* thieves, cuz that's, ya know, *cooler*. >not just one woman threatens to separate them, but two. And oh yeah, it's a mother/daughter duo, both (inexplicably) drawn to the same dude (really, how much ego massage does Getty need?) >and Mom has a creepy friend who practically brow beats her into the affair because, uh... no reason, really: just makes mom's adultery more forgivable >the boy's criminal bosses aren't just pointlessly bizarre, they're pointless: they steal focus without adding interest >oh, and it's a coming of age story about 'boys' in their late twenties/thirties, even though it would have worked better on several levels played roughly a decade younger.David Arquette is surprisingly good: the viewer is more in touch with what he's feeling than he is himself, making the emotional cyclone of the climax feel real and inevitable. Margulies is radiant, sensitive-- anyone would fall in love with her. But Getty seems out of his depth and Birch is painfully wooden: no chemistry between them, leaving Arquette to carry the load alone.Worth seeing? Depends on how big a soft spot you have for bad boys, and whether you are put off by the smell of unfulfilled potential.

This should have been a moody, gritty, movie which lingered in the memory as an exposition of relationship where the dominant personality only survives because the personality being dominated sees no hope of change.The acting was intense and skillful, the dialogue worked but the movie was irritatingly ineffective: too many distance shots that suggested lack of focus rather than a broader picture. Poor flow. The first 5 minutes could have been missed out altogether.I suspect that, with a different edit, this movie could have been compelling.In its current form it is flat, formless and tremendously disappointing.

This filmmaker wanted to make a movie without having a story to tell -- and did so. Really awful jumble of unlikely/unexplained coincidences and unidentifiable plot line, all without character or clear motivation.We get cliché snapshots instead of characters. One in particular is the diminutive and beautiful crime boss, who projects an overdone "tough guy" persona and casts a cartoonish shadow of intimidation over the actual tough guys who have been brought in to work for her. Nothing much startling to look at in the film except for one shot when the boys hit the road and one of them carries a tiny suitcase (as in, the smallest from a complete American Tourister set) in a bright, sky blue, without explanation or apology. Otherwise it's standard visually -- one other exception is a compelling shot of a beautiful bridge in CT.