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Last Moment of Clarity
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| Year: |
2020
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Director: |
Colin Krisel, James Krisel
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| Stars: |
Zach Avery, Samara Weaving, Brian Cox, Udo Kier, Carly Chaikin, Pasha D. Lychnikov, Robert Wesley Mason, Hal Oszan, Karl E. Landler, Nicole Ansari-Cox, Alex Fernandez, Karina Chery, Zoltan Hodi, Cyrus Leisy, Trevor Smithson, Wallis Herst, Kearsten Walden
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| Genre: |
Thriller |
| Rating: |
  4 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Sam Pivnic (Zach Avery) had his life fall apart a couple of years ago, and he has been trying to work out what happened ever since. He has had to flee to Paris, where he has found a job as a restaurant bicycle courier, delivering their meals around the local vicinity, but in his free time he obsessively charts the people he believes will have the answers to his personal tragedy that saw him lose the love of his life, Georgia (Samara Weaving). She was apparently shot dead in their apartment, a revenge attack for what Sam thinks was a conspiracy he became trapped in, but one day he is astounded to see her in a film, acting as an up-and-coming movie star. Could it be that she survived? And can he contact her again, if it is her?
Here's a little thriller that evidently hoped to put its own spin on Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, yet while that is regularly cited as one of the greatest films ever made by those in the know, it seemed deeply unlikely that this would win the same acclaim. The trouble was, while Hitch's thriller was presented in all its perversity and psychological complexity, and no matter how farfetched it became, it held a certain integrity to keep you watching. No such luck here, as Last Moment of Clarity burbled along with all the unbelievability on examination that Vertigo could be prone to, but all of it on the surface, so once it had worked itself out - which took a pretty large chunk of the running time - you had not accepted any of it as convincing.
Not helping, well, it seemed a lot of this had not worked out, but the leading man did not have the charisma of a James Stewart, indeed he barely had the charisma of a Sam Worthington, his doleful presence not much fun to watch trudging through the mystery to the extent that you might well have given up caring well before the big revelations hit the plot. That more or less summed up the mood, depressive as if all concerned were trying to get over bad breakups and had channelled that lack of satisfaction with life into their performances. Only Carly Chaikin as Kat, a newfound ally for Sam who arrives part of the way through, exhibited anything like a personality that you would be keen to watch for an entire picture, and as such came across as wasted on the plank of wood that was Sam, who we don't agree is as attractive as Kat finds him.
Who was attractive was Samara Weaving, who was nude in a few scenes and half-scenes, which was all very well but was clearly asked to disrobe to keep the audience's waning interest up; you kind of wish she had saved this kind of thing for a better movie, as it seemed she was wasting her time on this, arriving just as her career was taking off internationally. Also there was Brian Cox as the restaurant owner, gruff but that was about it, and Udo Kier was an Eastern European gangster now bedridden in hospital who had instigated the conspiracy against the lead. In between there was a lot of uncomfortable celebrity stalking material as Sam endeavours to get close to the now starry Weaving and discern whether she really was his old flame, which may not have that surprising an outcome, but you do not feel it is one he deserves, no matter the occasional remorse he expresses for behaving like a dangerous nutter. The pieces may have been there for a promising jigsaw of a thriller, but as it turned out, they didn't fit, not like this. Music by Benjamin Patrick.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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