A Violent Separation | Film Review

 

I heard about this film ages ago, and added it to my to-watch list. But I don't remember hearing about it since, and so I forgot about it. However, it recently came on the Sky Premiere channel, so I finally got the chance to watch it.

Police deputy Norman Young (Brenton Thwaites) covers up a murder committed by his brother, only for things to become complicated when Norman falls in love with the victim's sister.

After I watched the movie, the first review I saw said something along the lines of 'Everyone watched this movie for the cast, not the plot'. I watched it for Claire Holt, who plays Abbey, so that review is definitely true for me!

This isn't a great film at all. For a start, it assumes that we care about these characters, but it gives us nothing to care about. The characters, the story, there's not really anything there.

None of these characters feel like real people. It's not that the premise of the story is particularly far-fetched, but that everything the characters do and say feels unrealistic.

In addition to that, the events of the story feel really passive for the audience. We are not living this story with the characters, we are observing, but the story isn't interesting enough to make that observation worth it.

The film tries to do too much, and take on too many themes. What this leaves is an attempt to work through a theme that never gets finished.

The thing about this film is that the premise could have allowed for a lot of avenues. It could have been a thriller, or a twisted romance, but what we ended up with was a lacklustre drama. It could have taken a lot of interesting routes, but every single one of them was ignored.

The cardinal sin of this film is that it's boring. Even with it being what it is, a few small changes could have made it interesting. I wanted to care about what happened to the characters, but I just didn't. Even the dramatic climax didn't help it.

Overall, I wouldn't really recommend the film, and I doubt I'll ever watch it again. There are much better films out there with similar premises.   

1.5/10