Poolman | Film Review

When a pool cleaner (Chris Pine) is approached by a mysterious femme fatale (DeWanda Wise), he becomes involved in uncovering a shady business deal.

I have to admit that I only watched this film for two reasons. One, because I'm a huge fan of Chris Pine and this is his directorial debut, and two, because of the negative reviews. The film has been panned so harshly that I had to watch it to see if it could really be that bad!

While I think it didn't need to be panned as harshly as it was, I didn't like the film, and there are definite problems with it!

For a start, what is it about? At 30 minutes in I made a note that I had no idea what was going on or what it was about, and after watching it in its entirety, I don't think much changed!

The characters were somewhat interesting, but very odd, and not particularly fun to watch. 

This is especially true of the main character, Darren Barrenman, who I never really understood and definitely didn't like.

The dialogue is good, and the relationships between the characters is probably the best thing about the film. But everything ultimately gets let down because of the plot.

For a long time the film felt like it was going nowhere, and you have to make a conscious effort to stick with it. For me personally, I knew that if I turned it off, there was nothing interesting enough in it to make me eventually finish it, so I just kept going.

Another issue with the film was the length. It isn't a particularly long film at 1hr 40, but because it's so convoluted, confusing and uninteresting, it feels like it lasts forever. If the plot was a bit more coherent, it feels like some of that time could have been cut down to make this a good 85-90 minutes long.

By the time the film ended, I was sure that I'd forget every detail. And having seen this a little while ago now, the plot isn't particularly memorable.

Overall, I'm still a huge Chris Pine fan, but the film fell a bit flat for me. The dialogue and character relationships were great, and the actors did a great job, but they were all let down by a weak, confusing plot.

3/10