With its distinguished group of filmmakers, Jack and I thought we'd really like this thriller, but did not. Oscar Isaac plays an intense ex-military interrogator turned precise gambler and we can't fault his performance. Tiffany Haddish and Tye Sheridan are his colleagues, and Willem Dafoe a retired general.
Acclaimed director/writer Paul Schrader is known for his intense work, so that wasn't a surprise. Maybe it was the violence of the flashbacks that turned me off. My favorite aspect of the movie was its music––the original score by Robert Levon Been and Giancarlo Vulcano is available on Apple Music as well as another album of songs.
Isaac was last blogged for The Addams Family plus an appearance in an Oscar-nominated short The Letter Room, Haddish for Here Today, Sheridan for Mud (he was a teenager then), Dafoe for The Lighthouse, and Schrader for First Reformed. Been and Vulcano are new to me.
My Producers Plethora Prize list will be updated with this project, since it boasts 34 producers.
Rotten Tomatoes's critics, averaging 86%, hold a similar hand to the festivals, where this one has a number of nominations and wins (here's my running list of a few of them). Its audiences, however, are folding, as we did, averaging a rotten 42%.
We rented it on iTunes January 18.
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