Blackbird Reviews

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since there was a really nice cast involved, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, it’s only afterwards that I discovered that it was actually a remake of a rather obscure Danish movie. Anyway, it turned out to be a decent watch but, to be honest, not much more than that though. I mean, I won’t blame the cast (Susan Sarandon, Sam Neill, Kate Winslet, Rainn Wilson, Mia Wasikowska), they were all very well cast and they all did a fine job. Eventually, I’m afraid the material was not really strong after all and it didn’t help that they didn’t do anything really interesting or surprising with it. They did add a couple of twists, the first one was not bad but there was simply no time to do something really interesting with it and the second one was even less satisfying as it was added there just to add some extra drama towards the end. Concerning the characters, even though there were only 8, it seemed to be apparently too much to handle for a rather short movie. Indeed, as a result, to speed things up, all the characters involved got appointed a specific stereotype because there was simply not enough time to really develop any of them. The biggest victim was probably Kate Winslet, arguably the biggest name in this strong cast, who ended up playing her least flashy role so far. Of course, I can see the appeal of completely dialing down all the glamor especially when you are a famous actor in order to play the most average middle-class woman ever. However, in this case, I’m afraid it did backfire as there was absolutely nothing intriguing going on with this woman. At least, even if Mia Wasikowska’s character was also a walking cliché, she did have more to chew on. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a solid drama and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.