By Emilio Frenk.
Director: George Clooney
Cast: Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Oscar Isaac, Noah Jupe, Glenn Fleshler, Megan Ferguson, Jack Conley, Gary Basaraba and Michael D. Cohen
Rating: Poor.
Academy Award Winner George Clooney brings his 6th film behind the camera and he does with “Suburbicon” and this is one major disappointment.
Set in the 50´s the movie tells the story of Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) a family man that lives in the quite neighborhood of “Suburbicon”.
One night his family will suffer a break in from two robbers when they break in to his home and kill his wife Rose (Julianne Moore).
Now Rose´s twin sister Margaret (Julianne Moore) will move in with his brother in law to take care of his son Nick (Noah Jupe).
Eventually things will come up on regards of Rose´s mother when one day Bud Cooper (Oscar Isaac) an insurance investigator comes to do his work in regards of what really happened in regards of Rose´s murderer.
Now Gardner will need to cover his tracks since he is a suspect or he will be history.
The thing that I disliked the most of “Suburbicon” was the story itself. The movie was all over the place and this was in the writing.
I am very surprised since two of the writers where both Joel and Ethan Coen, who are remarkable filmmakers and of course George Clooney and Grant Heslov who normally do deliver good quality in the film but this time all four failed and badly.
One of the worst mistakes is to mix up to plots in the movie and this was the case. In one hand Clooney showed an African American family who moved to a white neighborhood and the other was the murder mystery.
It is clear that George Clooney wanted to do a political statement with this movie but it failed and badly.
Again when you have more than 3 writers in a project the chances are that is going to fail and the result in this film speaks for itself.
Clooney should have focused in only one subject matter and perhaps we would have been talking of another film here.
Clooney´s directing was all over the place and the performances of the cast where not convincing, except for Noah Jupe who portrays Damon´s son in the movie that he is the most decent one.
This movie had potential to be a very good movie since George Clooney not only is a great actor, but also a very good filmmaker. We have seen it in movies like “Goodnight and Good Luck”, “The Ides of March” and “Confeesions of a Dangerous Mind” where the cast on this movie delivered outstanding performances.
Just like he did with “The Monuments Men”, Clooney did´t learn from his mistakes and unfortunately the product he delivered here was very mediocre.
The pacing was very slow and honestly I couldn´t care less about the characters, in fact when it was the half of the second act I wanted it to be over.
Visually is a very good movie and the cinematography from Robert Elswit was really good. The lightning was good and it was the only thing that Clooney focused in this picture.
Hopefully this is a learning experience for George Clooney and hopefully he can deliver a good movie.
“Suburbicon” is one of the biggest disappointments of this year and I cannot recommend it for it´s dumb screenplay and the way the story was told in a very predictable manner.