When the fish don’t bite, Dill can whore himself out to local sexpot Constance ( Diane Lane, charmingly noir-ish and better than this rotten film deserves). McConaughey stars as Baker Dill, a man with a sole purpose in life: to land that big tuna he’s been catching for years while living on the tropical Plymouth Island. I doubt the film would hold up to scrutiny on a second viewing because its reasoning starts to fall apart the minute you examine it. 2013’s “Now You See Me” did this and I would put this film’s twist on a par with that film’s head-scratching-for-all-the-wrong-reasons finale. That’s always such a cheat, in my opinion, when the lack of character development or sometimes total logic can be written off by a twist you couldn’t possibly have seen coming, even if you were paying attention. To call any one character in this film more than one-dimensional would be giving them far too much credit, but then again, that twist more or less rewrites the rules of everything that’s come before.
Any character nuance he showed as a writer on that film has been replaced with dull and shallow clichés masquerading as characters. It’s even more surprising when it comes from someone who has proven themselves a good storyteller in the past, as writer/director Steven Knight did with 2014’s “Locke“. When the finished product is such a muddled mess of unanswered questions and wasted potential, one has to wonder if this particular writer/director is worth investing in. I’m always surprised when a film like “Serenity” is credited to one writer and director, because that is typically as close to a pure vision of its creator’s intent as possible-barring budget cuts or typical studio interference, none of which this film had to my knowledge. What little faith one may put in a film starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway in the year 2019 is eroded by one of the strangest plot twists in recent memory. Sorry bad movie lovers, 2019 doesn’t have its front-runner quite yet in “Serenity”, a mostly wasted opportunity to do anything interesting with a mildly intriguing neo-noir. “I’m not begging you Baker Dill, I’m just telling you when life offers you an opportunity like this, you have to take it.” Rated: R (for language throughout, sexual content, and some bloody images)
Produced by: Guy Heeley, Steven Knight, Greg Shapiro
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