JAMES BOND

Fricking dreadful daytime tv fare, except that it has 2 big name actors playing the parents of an apparently pretty (and yes, pretty to look at) brain-dead boy who more or less accidentally killed his girlfriend. None of it convinces. Even Meryl Streep, normally someone who amazes, seems like she can’t really be bothered using her normal acting skills. It’s just dreary. How can you not agonise for years over causing someone’s death? He gets over it real quick. At the end the whole family presents as people who had a few bad days, but don’t worry about us, folks, we’re gonna be fine. You too can get over your son bashing a girl up, even if she does die. Because well, she came at him first, I mean fair’s fair. Don’t watch this utterly misconceived rubbish. There’s no sense of redemption or insight here at all. Awful tripe.

It really is rubbish, very badly constructed, so that it fails to engage the viewer or even command the appropriate degree of sympathy for Joe or for Jason. It seems to meander all over the place, completely unaware of its direction. I found it hard to care. I was not taken in by the incarnation of the dead Jason, and not even sure if I was supposed to be. The filmic conceit just failed, really, it’s too much of an overused trope these days. This story called for far more subtlety and nuance than it was capable of delivering.