Control

An ambitious movie that lacks the means to fulfill its aspirations Bookended by a couple of location shoots that must have accounted for more than half of the film's budget, this is the latest entry in a genre that includes Buried (2010) and Phone Booth (2002), in which a victim trapped in a confined space is taunted by a moralising voice on the end of a phone line The twist here is that the immobile victim is trapped inside a moving (self-driving) vehicle, turning this into a sort of schlocky, genre variation on Steven Knight's brilliant Locke (2013), where Tom Hardy has to resolve his personal issues from behind the wheel of his BMW X5, with only his bluetooth connection to help Interestingly, all four films revolve around marital infidelity, with the confined circumstances of the protagonists forcing them to confront the consequences of their actions The difference between Control and the other examples cited above is the ingenious ways the other movies find to complicate and escalate the bind in which their characters find themselves The scenario and the antagonist's motivations established within the first ten-to-fifteen minutes of the movie and the parameters never really change, which means the only entertainment we have are the disembodied Spacey's long monologues about what a terrible person Metcalfe's protagonist is and how the powerful disregard or mistreat the ordinary people all around them at their peril Metcalfe's character is the UK Home Secretary, which makes Spacey's overwrought and often unintentionally comic rhetoric feel very on the nose and student politics-y The film *really* commits to its premise, never straying outwith the confines of the vehicle, meaning all the drama has to play out on Metcalfe's face That's admirable, but a film with greater resources at its disposal would have been able to create a greater sense that this was happening inside a speeding vehicle, rather than in front of a green screen or back-projection of blurry London streets And maybe a stunt or some fast-paced mayhem and destruction, to break up the sedentary monologues and create a sense of physical peril as well as moral hazard.

This seems to be a film that aims to give us a good feeling because those nasty politicians get what is coming to them finally. It is obviouly done on a very tigh budget because the whole film is really about one actress in a car with a voice tormenting her. Frankly after the first 10 minutes it gets rather boring so skip to the last 10 and save the time waste and get the ending. It is one of those films that pretends to be or maybe (being kinder) aspires to meaningful and moral but comes of a bit creepy and one dimensional. The actress struggled with the role and who can blame her with the material she had to present.

No review content available.

To say this film is bad doesn't really give justice to how bad it truly is. Some of the worst acting ever seen by the female lead in the film as well as the rest of the cast...even Kevin Spacey, who does NOT appear in the movie (yes, the film director and the marketing team really tried to mislead audiences here...) gives an extremely disappointing performance with his voice over. The plot is poor, flawed and boringly unoriginal. The dialogue is just the worst and most unnatural dialogue I've ever heard in a film, and a female lead clearly written by a man. It is so insulting to women and women filmmakers...Continuity does not exist - they couldn't even be bothered to use the same colour car for the final "car stunt" of the film when they blatantly used a different model and colour car. This is a film made purely to try and attach a "name" and boost the director and producers ego, suffice to say the only name they could attach is that of Hollywood actor with a tainted reputation, and even they could not get him to appear in the film but merely record his voice. It is baffling that this film director is even allowed to make films with so much unrecognised talent out there with actual original stories and actual real pure talent and passion for the craft. Watch this film at your own peril. Some films are so bad they become iconic, this is NOT one of them. It is a film that is so bad that it should be erased from the fact of the planet. Unless you're into films with bad acting, no storyline and awful writing - in that case, this is just for you.