Director: Erik Van Looy
Writers: Bart De Pauw (based upon the film written by), Wesley Strick (screenplay)
Stars: Karl Urban, James Marsden, Wentworth Miller
Plot: Five married guys conspire to secretly share a penthouse loft in the city–a place where they can carry out hidden affairs and indulge in their deepest fantasies. But the fantasy becomes a nightmare when they discover the dead body of an unknown woman in the loft, and they realize one of the group must be involved.
Running Time: 1 hour 48 minutes
Rotten Tomatoes Score: Critics 13% Audience 37%
Why I watched it: The cast for the most part, the trailer looked alright.
Random Thoughts: This is a remake of a Belgian film, the director and one actor Schoenaerts were involved with that one. From what I read it’s a pretty close remake, I haven’t seen the original. From the plot description this really feels like it should have been made in the late 80′s, seems like a half sexy half sleazy thriller. Going in I knew this was going to be a hard film to like cause you have five guys cheating on their wives and one man be a murder, also all of these guys are somewhat wealthy. White people problems I guess.
What I liked: I’m big fans of James Marsden and Karl Urban, really think both of these actors are underrated and under used. Mardsen here does his best and I will say he almost pulls off being likeable, he does but that’s only because no one else is in this movie. He’s the guy who at least tries to do the right thing and actually seems like a decent but flawed human being.
I do like the set up, the whole these men share this apartment and they find a body so it becomes a whodunit. I will say this the movie is full of twists and turns and some really don’t work but there’s two I like, one is clever and really changes the movie and the other is a good surprise.
What I didn’t like: Not only is this a really flawed film but man it’s wrong headed. This idea could work, Fatal Attraction was a good film about a guy who has an affair and pays a price, The Loft is too mean spirited to be enjoyable, you can’t have this many unlikable characters and actually care what happens. Oh boy are women portrayed badly, I hate to use this phrase but in this day and age to portray women like this is not only wrong headed but so cliched and lazy writing, in the 40′s this would be seen as bad.
My major problem with the film and it has lots of them is I never bought these guys as friends, if they could have pulled this off the film might have had a chance, everyone is so unlikable I can’t see them wanting to spend time with each other. Now I said that women get the short end of the stick but boy the men are all portrayed as heartless assholes. We have a loudmouth, a man who may have no soul whatsoever and the others are either deeply flawed or not mentally well. It’s a shame these are good actors here but the script is just lazy and really badly thought out.
I want to hit on the twists and turns in this film cause there’s like 7 of them, like I said a couple work but there’s too many, this films as 4 different endings, it just keeps going, every time you think it’ll fade to black we get another scene. The film just didn’t know when to stop, they kept throwing more wood on the fire, a couple of the things that happen are silly and really at the end this film makes no sense it twists it’s self in knots.
Final Thoughts: A lot of people didn’t like this film, heck a lot of critics hated this movie and I went in thinking it couldn’t be that bad, I was wrong, it’s a mess.
Rating: 3/10
Movie Burner Entertainment 