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You Belong to Me (2021)
Echoes of Manchester by Sea - good acting, this is not trying to be a blockbuster
It's easy to trash movies like this, how easy is it to be fair ? Most reviews i'm reading are not balanced. I'm not used to this but here goes.
The cast is good, Casey is obviously on point as usual, he really knows how to build tension in this thriller plot with his defenseless nonchalance. You want him to react but he's so slow to become the hero. You're not going to get typical horror style devices (sound, music, editing) but instead you derive a feeling of desperation in the story through the unraveling of Casey's character, a professor of psychology who's family is about to be skewered by a fairly predictable lunatic. It's his slow burn inner torture that works it's Manchester by Sea magic on you. You're annoyed at him constantly for not being reacting to the facts. Pause for thought here, before you conclude therefore, that the movie is just 'slow' etc. It's trying to build an almost theatrical tension that pays off int the end, without trying to feed you thriller Kool-aid.
As far as the plot goes, yes it could have been better, but it's certainly watchable (6.7/10 watchable in my view) and i'm easily disappointed by most movies. This one didn't try to hide it's agenda and wasn't trying to be exceptionally clever. A psycho who, it seems, wants to avenge his sisters suicide in a way that's unclear. It's clear by the themes around the sexual manipulation of Philip's (Affleck) wife and daughter that murder is not necessarily his principle motivation, you wonder what, then. The rest of the cast are good and there's good chemistry. Although i'd probably recast the psycho, his character needed more thought. The way Casey's life is unravelled is believable, it's well done and you don't quite know where the plot is going so the ending is relatively well concealed.
It's is a pensive movie, sometimes bordering on pretentious which is the risk you take when avoiding blockbuster status. I think the director perhaps overestimates the audiences desire to engage. Using Affleck to nail that understated tone, there are family themes here which are well handled, not easy to make believable, which makes the drama even more cruel. The ending is honest, revealing and brutal. Which remind me of the main thing I wanted to say : most scenes in this movie are well acted, well directed and believable. So why not rate the movie at it's real value, instead of pitting it against all those exciting blockbusters we like to switch off to ?