4 November 2004

Review: Primer (4/5)

Primer

Memento was a cakewalk.

We walked out of the theater baffled ... no, halfway through the movie we were baffled and continued to be baffled to the end and to the point that we were walking out of the theater. It took some discussion afterwards to finally map out exactly what happened, and some events are still (gratefully) unanswered. The clever plot threw enough clues to hook you but not enough to give it away.

In the movie, the protagonists are engineers attempting to create something, anything, marketable so that they can grab some VC cash and leave their crummy jobs (hey!). Providing much more of a description of the story is difficult without giving away what they finally create (which happens about 1/3 into the film), their struggle to understand it (maybe another 1/3), and finally the chaos it creates in their lives. The movie holds the suspense almost to the end of the film.

The acting is average at times--one of those times unfortunately is the very first scene--but not so bad it gets in the way. Also, the movie is only one hour and 20 minutes, so some depth could have been added to both character and story. Those problems are very minor for what this film achieves.

[ posted by sstrader on 4 November 2004 at 11:29:22 AM in Cinema ]