By Emilio Frenk.
Director: James Foley
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eric Johnson, Eloise Mumford, Bella Heathcote, Rita Ora, Bruce Altman, Marcia Gay Harden and Kim Basinger.
Rating: Poor.
James Foley, director of “Confidence”, “At Close Range” and “Glengarry Glen Ross” brings “Fifty Shades Darker”, the second installment of“Fifty Shades of Grey” and like it´s predecessor the results were poor.
Based on the trilogy written by E.L. James, “Fifty Shades Darker” tells the story of Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) who recently broke up his relationship with billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan).
Now Anastasia works now as an Assistant for an Editorial Publishing Company in Seattle, Washington finding her dream job.
One day in a exhibition, Anastasia encounters with Christian who invites her to dinner and tries to convince Anastasia to start over their relantionship.
Anastasia at the beginning is reluctant about Christian´s proposal but at the end she accepts under the condition that there will be no rules and punishments just like it was in before and Christian agrees.
While they are together again Christian will have to fight against his personal demons while Anastasia will have to confront the anger and envy of women who were in Christian´s past, specially Elena Lincoln (Kim Basinger) a woman in Christian´s life who introduced him to the Bondage, Discipline,Dominance and Submission, Sadomaschism world, also known as BDSM who will do anything to interfere in the relationship of Christian and Anastasia to win him over again.
Now both Anastasia and Christian will have to overcome their obstacles of their relationship in order to be happy.
Compared to the previous film of “Fifty Shades of Grey”, I was having sort of a slight hope that this second movie would show someimprovement since they brought a better director on board, but unfortunately this wasn´t the case.
The major problem was the screenplay which this time was written by Niall Leonard. The dialogue of the movie was to on the nose and the movie was predictable from the minute it started to the end.
There were things that didn´t make any sense and did not justify the story whatsoever. The acting on the film was to exaggerated and again I didn´t believe in any of the performances that I saw on the screen.
I do think that both Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan are really talented actors but they both need a proper guidance. Again both of them failed and the movie is a complete mess.
Honestly I didn´t feel any sympathy for neither of the characters of the film and it doesn´t work.
I understand the movie is directed towards a female audience but the filmmakers could have done a much better effort and at least made it more entertaining and less overacted.
James Foley is a great director and knows how to direct very good performances and yes some of it it´s his fault but the damage was already done when the screenplay was on board and the writer didn´t bother in doing any rewrites.
With that being said “Fifty Shades Darker” is one of the worst movies of 2017 and I cannot give it a recommendation.