"Passion" (2013)

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

This remake of the French-language film Love Crime revolves around manipulative advertising boss Christine Stanford and her talented protégée Isabelle James. The rivalry between them starts out as Christine simply taking credit for one of Isabelle's ideas, and soon escalates to the point of insanity.
You know, I did imagine myself saying, "I haven't seen the original, but it can't be this bad," to describe this movie, but I didn't think it actually would be that bad! I mean, wow! This is one of the shallowest movies I've ever seen.
Christine is a completely one-note character: a smug manipulative bitch that I despised not for her actions but because there was nothing more to her. That just makes the escalation from stealing credit to public humiliation all the more ludicrous.
With the entire basis for the story being so one-dimensional, it's like this movie was purposely made just to annoy me! In a good story, you're angry at the villain. But in this case, I was angry at the creative team because I felt like I was being manipulated, expected to take such despicably bare-bones rivalry seriously.
The only redeeming factor is Dani, the only sensible character in this entire travesty.
So yeah, indeed I haven't seen the original, but it must surely be more fleshed out than this! This is right up there with Movie 43 and Die Hard 5 as one of the worst movies of the year so far.

My rating: 20%