An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since there was a decent cast involved and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, I have to admit that I was positively surprised by the damned thing after all. Indeed, even though it didn’t seem to have a stellar reputation, I thought it was actually a really solid minimalistic and realistic courtroom thriller. Basically, all the action took place in the court-room and focused only on the case with some occasional flashbacks which were efficient because they were all rather ambiguous. Another interesting approach was not to spend any time on the private lives of the characters involved which was quite refreshing and it worked really well. As a result, by showing so very little, I kept wondering who they all were and they all became automatically more intriguing than they would actually be if I would have known more about them. This approach didn’t really work only for the character played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw. I mean, she was charismatic as usual and she did what she could with what she was provided but her character just didn’t have enough impact on the whole proceedings (she was even told by her boss that she was basically only some window-dressing). It was also surprising how this trial was similar to the notorious Menendez brothers case. Indeed, it was dealing with a rich kid who seemed to have killed his father in cold-blood and, then, pretty much out-of-the-blue, he claimed to have been molested by his father as his defense. It’s interesting because, in spite of the public support the Menendez brothers have received recently, I never believed them and it’s exactly how it was played in this movie. So, it was actually really solid and it would have been fine if they would have stopped the whole thing after Mike was acquitted. Indeed, there would have been so many cool questions left. Did he do it? Did his mother do it? Did his father actually molest him? Did his father actually physically abuse his mother? It would have been pretty much pitch-perfect this way. However, for some reasons, probably because the makers were some spineless losers, they added another twist ending which not only created some plot-holes but, above all, it was so completely uninteresting and had zero value whatsoever, except for trying to shock the audience one last time. Anyway, to conclude, in spite this really lame ending, the rest of the movie was actually not bad at all and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

6/10