I noticed that this movie was still playing in theaters and decided to give it a try. Movies based on true story and with an interesting subject, tend to intrigued me. But I saw this one by myself as I could not convince my wife it was a good enough movie for her to see. Anyway, here goes about the film.
Brief Story Line
Set in the early 1980s, two best friends since high school, Joe Hunt (Ansel Elgort - Baby Driver, Divergent series etc) a very intelligent guy worked in the finance area and Dean Carny (Taron Egerton - Robin Hood, Kingsman: The Golden Circle etc) who loved to hang out with some of the very rich young people decided to form a financial company called BBC and get profit by investing in various items. They attracted huge investments from various people including their high school friends as well. But their biggest investor would be a high profile ex Wall Street player named Ron Levin (Kevin Spacey - L.A Confidential, House of Cards TV series etc).
Being a middle class person made Joe very ambitious in getting rich fast and he really got the support from Dean who was a high risk taker as well. Joe also got close to a woman named Sydney Evans (Emma Roberts - Nerve, American Horror Story TV series etc). He also felt the need to have a bodyguard with him and hired Tim Pitt (Bokeem Woodbine - Spider-man: Homecoming etc) who used to be a club bouncer. However, all BBC did were merely collecting investors money with promise of high interest return paid from other new investors.
How would things turned out for all in BBC? Find them all in this drama based on true story.
End of Brief Story Line
OK, one thing that really bothered me when I read the news about the movie was the fact how low it was considered by critics. By the time I saw this movie, it had less than 10% Rotten Tomatoes and it had a very lousy box office performance. All due to the fact the controversy surrounding Kevin Spacey. Now I do not condone what he did in the past, but I think it would be unfair to not give this movie a chance which actually was pretty decent and was given a lot of effort by other people.
Anyway, when I saw the movie, at first it was pretty interesting. It started out nicely with the narration from Taron Egerton as Dean Carny (so the movie seemed to be told from his point of view). Then it became even more interesting when the two lead characters formed BBC and managed to attract other investors. But then I am not sure why, I felt the story side tracked a bit with the love story angle and seemed like the focus shifted from the BBC. However, whenever Kevin Spacey appeared, his presence left quite an impression. I thought he suit this role nicely (regardless of his past crimes).
The second half of the movie did surprised me as it became a lot darker, especially with the crimes these young people committed. And it really had a surprising twist ending (which I should have guessed). But what really amazed me about this movie was the fact it was based on true story. I thought it was really crazy how their lives completely changed. And to be honest, the ending (especially as it was narrated by Dean) was a nice element. It gave us something to really think about on whether the actual facts did happen like visualized in this movie.
Btw, from the info I read, this movie was actually a remake of a two parts TV movie back in 1987. And funnily enough, the guy playing Joe Hunt that time was Judd Nelson (The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire etc) who played Joe's father in here. Oh there were actually quite a lot of supporting cast in here such as Suki Waterhouse, Jeremy Irvine, Cary Elwes and few others. However I thought their performances were barely noticeable as the focus were mainly on Elgort, Egerton and Kevin Spacey.
Despite the fact that it was based on a true story, the film unfortunately did not really pick up its early promising start. Its middle part felt really flat and it only got really interesting towards the final third of the movie. But overall I thought it did not deserve such low rating. There were moments where the movie felt suspenseful enough, however it did not fall into the category of wonderful movie either. It was just a decent attempt on showing us these young people's story. If you are interested in this kind of story, you could give it a try, but do not expect some kind of Award worthy movie.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment