Rating of
2/4
Boring and Baffling
Looneymanthegreat - wrote on 03/18/13
Very little of this review will be about anything other then the last five minutes of The Call, because that is the only bit of the movie that matters even the slightest bit. Up until that final five minutes I was rather unperturbed by anything that went on on the screen. I was able to predict almost everything else that happened in the movie up to an hour before it happened.
In summary, it was a pretty standard thriller with a potentially interesting premise that is taken nowhere interesting. The key to this sort of movie is unpredictability, to keep the audience entertained they need to be wondering what’s next. This is why I did not love the recent Zero Dark Thirty, because it was a thriller with a conclusion that was common knowledge before the script was even written. Plot predictability is okay as long as the characters and set-ups are interesting in its stead, but that is not the case with The Call. Other then the last bit (don’t worry, I’m getting there) it was just sort of boring.
The part of the movie that actually matters (in this case the ending) is the part that really fascinates me. It makes no sense, and that alone is not that out of the ordinary, but it makes no sense in a very interesting way. The movie stars two characters that are basically straight arrows, they both seem to be ordinary moral people and one of them seems to be more so then most. Then suddenly as the third act comes around they both, without talking it amongst themselves to any degree do something awful (A.K.A. against character for the both of them,) without any logic behind it. It’s just baffling and insane, and for that reason it is by far the most entertaining part of the movie.
I wouldn’t recommend this to the thinking cinephile or the thoughtless one. Its baffling ending makes it to dumb for the first yet to complex for the second. It’s just a stupid dull movie that will probably be forgotten in a few months; at least I hope so.
