The Square (2010)

Great Film overall

Beautiful, moving film.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The action in The Square takes place in a small Australian town, a town so small that everyone knows everyone at least casually, and when a party is arranged most of the residents are invited.Two of these residents are middle aged construction foreman Ray (David Roberts) and a hairdresser in her early 20s named Carla (Claire van der Boom – an awesome stripper name if there ever was one!). Ray and Carla are married… but not to each other.Things start going wrong early, but on a smaller scale. Ray and Carla intend to leave their respective spouses and skip town, but first they need cash. To come up with the cash they each come up with a plan, Ray cuts a side deal with a shonky contractor, and Carla's plan involves theft and just a pinch of arson."It's not like anyone will get hurt", she reasons. How wrong she is.The Square is as dark as films come, everyone in the film is varying degrees of shonky otherwise they don't get any lines. No room for the honest here Mate. But this is a decidedly non-Hollywood noir, the protagonists aren't gangsters or hit men or criminal geniuses, they are tow-truck drivers, hairdressers and local slobs.As the ever growing bodycount envelops both the innocent and the not so… more and more are intertwined in an ever more complex story that should have begun and ended with Ray and Carla skipping town. Alas once the paranoia, mistrust and guilt leads to cover up, murder and betrayal no-one in The Square is destined for a happy ending.As a viewer I kept thinking "Now how are you gonna get out of this?" and "Don't do that you dickhead", but the actions of those involved never stray into cartoon or the illogical – at least to them. It might take a leap of faith to pretend all the events in the film happen over a short time frame, but it isn't beyond the stretch of the imagination to think most of this stuff could happen.I just hope it never happens near me.Final Rating – 6 / 10. An effective and intricately drawn drama that will keep you guessing and involved until the very end, even once you realise there cannot possibly be a happy outcome.

In a tradition that began with the French back in 1938, Nash and Joel Edgerton have written, produced, directed and edited a truly gritty film noir – replete with the requisite femme fatale – within a typical Australian setting, in around the outer suburbs of Sydney. While the story is fiction, there is nothing fake about the mise-en-scene, the culture of the Australian male, the everyday corruption in personal and business life and so on...Because it's all so ordinary. That's what makes it so interesting, evoking a comparison with the more famous Cohen brothers who have delighted us with Blood Simple (1984), Fargo (1996), No Country for Old Men (2007) and others – all of which showed us how ordinary, decent, criminal people get involved in nefarious activities which, ultimately, resulted in mayhem, chaos and death, for some.So, in a typical suburban setting, a couple (both married) are having a torrid affair, with the woman urging her lover to run away with her. When she finds a bag of money in the upper crawl space of her house, hidden by her husband, she steals it and convinces her lover to burn the house down, thus covering the loss of the money. Or, so they think...As always, though, the unexpected arrives: when the house burns, so also an old woman who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. And, from there on, the lives of those involved in the dirty business spiral completely out of control as, inevitably, one thing leads to another and the bodies begin to pile up. But, that's not all.Meshing with the lover's attempts to scarper with the money is a twisted sub-plot and mystery that totally muddy the main story and will leave most – maybe all – viewers uncertain about the expected outcome to the whole story. Oh, you intuitively know that, in film noir, there'll be dramatic irony; in this one, however, everybody does get what they deserve, but for the wrong reasons. Maybe that's what happens in real life, more often than not? As the lovers, David Roberts (as Raymond) and Claire van der Bloom (as Carla) are near perfect: he as the reluctant, uncertain cuckold, she as the relentless pragmatist doing whatever it takes. Against them, there is Anthony Hayes (as Greg) and Joel Edgerton (as Billy) but these two men know nothing of the other until the final shootout – a meeting to be savored for its terrific pacing, editing and irony. In the background, murkily adding to the mix, there is the always-riveting Bill Hunter (as the construction boss, Gil), Paul Caesar (as the very surprising Sgt. Miles), Kieran Darcy-Smith (as Barney) and Brendan Donoghue (as Leonard).This is a mature and superbly produced film by two brothers who, in my opinion, will just get better and better. Foreign viewers might have some difficulty with strong Aussie accents from some characters – but no worse than some accents from some other countries. Do persevere with The Square, however: you won't be disappointed.My only real quibble is that a quote in the advertising material compares this one to Body Heat (1981). That's a stretch, I think: the two stories are quite different in substance, style and outcome. So, if you've seen that great film noir from Lawrence Kasdan, don't be mislead going in to see The Square.As to the actual square, well, there's no doubt that Raymond is a pretty dull sort of bloke who fumbles and bumbles his way into trouble fairly easily. But, he's also in construction and he's trying to get a large square of concrete poured to hide one of his biggest mistakes - buried there - before somebody finds out (I'm reminded of William H. Macy's bumbling Jerry in Fargo). Unhappily for Raymond, somebody does find out...Highly recommended.

When the dog got killed I laughed, soft-hearted dog lover that I am, because the Dog was standing in for the Square. (And what a dog! Able to race through neighborhoods, swim a river and then run through yet another neighborhood to find his cutie!) Come to think of it, the two owners of the dogs, in the opening sequence, while hooking up, had both dogs in the same car. Maybe the director's cut will open on the two dogs having a go of it and then pan over to Ray and Carla getting it on. But seriously..... By not showing a compelling reason, other than sex, in even one scene, I had increasing difficulty over Ray's willingness to dump everything for the sake of his sex mate. And jumping to the end of the movie, after a badly staged scene of Carla getting killed.....and the camera-on-a-crane showing a disconsolate and bloody Ray walking down the street away from the carnage, one is supposed to say 'tsk-tsk' poor guy. But I didn't have any sympathy for either Carla or Ray at that point. How do you sympathize with characters who have little character and who you don't like?Other more technical annoyances were a couple of impenetrable accents and also poor casting choices which made it confusing to know who was who.Why did Lenny steal the generator? And what did he have on Ray?It also wasn't enough to kill, in a road accident, the suspicious foreman but the writers had to also place an infant in the vehicle.After a break in, wouldn't the obvious thing to happen, with all the materials lying around, be the hiring of a security guard?And pray tell how did the boss-of-bosses and the law know about the blackmailing? More important, how were they going to resolve the serious breach of the law that they were involved in?There really were more silly things gathering along the way but you get the idea.....

"The Square" opens with two parked cars at a scenic overlook. In one of them, two agitated dogs observe the other vehicle where their respective owners, Ray and Carla, are engaging in some steamy extra-marital gymnastics. When Carla returns home from her tryst, she spots her rough diamond husband surreptitiously hiding a bag of cash in the ceiling of their washroom, whereupon she conceives the idea to steal the money and run off with her paramour to begin a new life together. Construction site manager Ray declines to go along with her scheme at first, anticipating a boatload of trouble fouling up his sweet kickback scam at work, but Carla's alluring charms soon prove too strong a temptation. The lovers hire themselves a dubious partner, lash together a leaky plan and set it in motion, only to meet with a firestorm of foul-ups, suspicion and terror."The Square" shares many themes and motifs with "Body Heat" and "Blood Simple". The chief differences are its gritty realism and fast pacing - and it also boasts an extensive cast of support roles that provide a bewildering array of possibilities for misunderstandings and betrayal among the various conspirators, victims and bystanders as their lives spiral out of control. By the time the dust has cleared at the conclusion, one begins to wonder if the phrase 'ratcheting up the tension' might not have been coined for this film. Nash Edgerton directs his brother Joel's tight script with verve, and extracts intense and believable performances from his actors. It all adds up to an impressive modern Indie film noir.