Word: plotting
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Since Sept. 11, big powers have come courting. U.S. officials who have long ignored the United Front are eager to plot cooperation. Russian generals muster Soviet-era equipment familiar to the fighters for immediate shipment. Iranian advisers, who steadily kept the rebel forces alive, promise more money and materiel. Afghan fighters, stalled for years just 30 miles from the capital of Kabul, see their dream of retaking the city within reach...
...Molly Shannon, late of “Saturday Night Live”) and Cusack enlists Dean (Jeremy Piven, who struck a nice chemistry with Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank). Both provide solid support, though I wish that they existed as more than just sounding boards/agents to further the plot, given that they are the only other characters with substantial screen time in this sparsely-populated film...
...plot moves along primarily through a series of coincidences and near-misses (she walks out of the café, he walks in!) that had my audience guffawing gently near the beginning, groaning by the end. I’m not certain whether the groans were a reaction to the shamelessness of the plot contrivances, or whether the audience simply wanted to see Beckinsale and Cusack together already. They are, admittedly, really cute together. Beckinsale lends earnestness to a somewhat flimsy character, and Cusack, we’ve talked about him. But if you came to see sparks fly between...
However, the flaws of the film lie more in plot than in its direction and acting. Peripheral storylines of love triangles, financial problems and familial bonding may bring depth to the characters, but not when they are introduced and immediately abandoned. Furthermore, some scenes are completely unnecessary. Dahl did not view his film so much as a teen thriller than as part of the great tradition of “road movies,” including films likeEasy Rider and Steven Spielberg’s Duel (similarly about a crazy, road raging trucker). However, this movie’s plot...
...contrived detective story, and progresses from the heist itself to an eventual capturing and convicting of the criminals. “It’s a really horrifying film...in a way it reminded me of a porno. You know the purpose, and you wonder what the plot is for. The spectacle it creates made it all the more terrible,” said Lusztig, recalling her first time viewing the film. Selected scenes from it are used in Reconstruction, most notably the recreation of the bank heist itself, and also some examples of the “detective?...