BAD SEED
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 2001 filmcritic.com
filmcritic.com
Despite an atrocious title, I actually held out hope for the direct-to-video Bad Seed's intriguing premise.
The film opens as man (Luke Wilson) confronts by his wife (Mili Avital), who screams in admission that she is having an affair. Enraged, he storms out of the house. When he returns, she is dead, and her now estranged boyfriend (Norman Reedus) is suspect. So our hero takes matters into his own hands, finds the boyfriend, and kills him.
Only he got the wrong guy.
That should be the ending of the movie, right? Wrong. That's ten minutes into the film, and Bad Seed quickly plummets off a cliff right there and lands in direct-to-VHS hell. The problem? There's just no story left after the intro. What develops is instead a dumbass cat and mouse game between Reedus and Wilson, with a sentimental P.I. (Dennis Farina) along for the ride. Entire plotlines are resolved, and then new ones arise, having nothing to do with what you've just seen (presumably to pad the film beyond sitcom length). Eventually, the whole ordeal becomes so contrived you don't know who the titular Bad Seed even is. After three or so false endings, you cease to care.
Shot in Seattle's melancholy, permanent rain, Bad Seed successfully evokes feelings of the tragedy it wants to be. Too bad the rest of the movie is not so successful.
RATING: **
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Jon Bokenkamp Producer: James Frey, Dan Glasser, Roni Eguia Writer: Jon Bokenkamp Starring: Luke Wilson, Norman Reedus, Dennis Farina, Mili Avital
No web site.
--- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=filmcriticcom&path=subst/video/sellers/amazon-top-100-dvd.html Movie Fiends: Check out Amazon.com's Top 100 Hot DVDs!
Visit filmcritic.com on the Web at http://www.filmcritic.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews