Below average yarn directed by Michael Winterbottom.

Much has been made about the violence portrayed in Michael Winterbottom’s latest offering but ultimately it’s just not a great movie.

The film is destined to be one that involves debates of violent depiction, domestic violence and treatment of women. But the mark of a good film maker is the ability to make a movie that on the one hand can be hard to watch and uncomfortable viewing but also depict the action in such a way to be thought provoking and emotive. Sadly this was just hard to watch to the point of making it tedious and asking why? Not why in the sense of what the film was about but why in the sense of why the film was ever made.

On one level I could see what Winterbottom was trying to depict. Casey Affleck plays Lou Ford, a small town deputy sheriff who has issues that surface into extreme violence. The movie does shows the duality of Ford’s character but it’s never engaging enough to get into the mind and rationale. On another level Winterbottom depicts the issue of domestic violence and this is probably a more thought provoking aspect. That some women actually have issues that try to rationalise domestic violence is a thorny issue which typically leads to accusations of misogyny. But it’s a dangerous route to go down when you start associating fictional work with the personality of a director. Is Winterbottom guilty of misogyny? I don’t think so and any adverse reaction is typical of that directed at male authors who explore the dark side of human relations between men and women.