360 (2012)
Starring Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Foster, Maria Flor, Jamel Debbouze, Lucia Siposová, and Gabriella Marcinkova
Directed by Fernando Meirelles
***This film is streaming instantly on Netflix***
Some people can't stand it, but I'm a fan of films that have seemingly unrelated stories that manage to somehow weave together by the film's end in unexpected ways. Whereas films like 2009's The Burning Plain and 2006's Babel use this storytelling technique to take on more serious subjects like domestic abuse and gun control, respectively, 360 attempts to utilize its interweaving stories by focusing on love. However, we already have an excellent movie that does this incredibly well in Love, Actually, and 360 fails at creating the depth needed for its much more serious tone than that 2003 film.
360 opens (and ends...hence the title) with Mirka (Lucia Siposová), a young Slovakian twentysomething getting nude photos taken in an attempt to enter the lucrative world of being an internet call girl. Almost immediately after having her pictures posted, she's chosen to have a meeting with Englishman Michael Daly (Jude Law) while he's on a business trip in Vienna. Michael is a married man and, thanks to a serious of events, ends up not going through with the meeting with Mirka. Little does Michael know that back in London, his wife Rose (Rachel Weisz) is having an affair with a Brazilian hunk named Rui. When Rui's girlfriend Laura (Maria Flor) finds out about his escapades, she leaves him to head back to Brazil. On the plane, Laura sits next to John (Anthony Hopkins) an older gentleman who has been looking for his missing daughter for years. He's flying to Denver because he has been told that an unidentified woman matching his daughter's description has been found dead. While on a layover in Colorado, Laura meets Tyler (Ben Foster) at an airport restaurant and she sees an opportunity to have an invigorating one-night stand as a means to forget about Rui who has done her wrong. Tyler, however, has just been released from prison for committing what we can only assume was a horrible sex crime and has to fight the urges to turn into the horrible man he once was.
As these stories begin to link up with one another, the problem begins to arise that we don't really care about any of them. Somehow, every single one of these stories seems superficial and fails to resonate on any type of emotional level with the audience. It's not that all these characters are flawed (although most of them are) as a movie full of flawed characters has a tendency to create some intriguing conflict; it's just that none of their stories are given the opportunity to create any impact. And, as 360 begins to come full circle, we realize that in the end these stories are rather mundane. This movie by its very nature wants you to look at the grand scheme of things by focusing on more intimate moments, but neither the big nor small pictures are charismatic enough to carry the film.
360 opens (and ends...hence the title) with Mirka (Lucia Siposová), a young Slovakian twentysomething getting nude photos taken in an attempt to enter the lucrative world of being an internet call girl. Almost immediately after having her pictures posted, she's chosen to have a meeting with Englishman Michael Daly (Jude Law) while he's on a business trip in Vienna. Michael is a married man and, thanks to a serious of events, ends up not going through with the meeting with Mirka. Little does Michael know that back in London, his wife Rose (Rachel Weisz) is having an affair with a Brazilian hunk named Rui. When Rui's girlfriend Laura (Maria Flor) finds out about his escapades, she leaves him to head back to Brazil. On the plane, Laura sits next to John (Anthony Hopkins) an older gentleman who has been looking for his missing daughter for years. He's flying to Denver because he has been told that an unidentified woman matching his daughter's description has been found dead. While on a layover in Colorado, Laura meets Tyler (Ben Foster) at an airport restaurant and she sees an opportunity to have an invigorating one-night stand as a means to forget about Rui who has done her wrong. Tyler, however, has just been released from prison for committing what we can only assume was a horrible sex crime and has to fight the urges to turn into the horrible man he once was.
As these stories begin to link up with one another, the problem begins to arise that we don't really care about any of them. Somehow, every single one of these stories seems superficial and fails to resonate on any type of emotional level with the audience. It's not that all these characters are flawed (although most of them are) as a movie full of flawed characters has a tendency to create some intriguing conflict; it's just that none of their stories are given the opportunity to create any impact. And, as 360 begins to come full circle, we realize that in the end these stories are rather mundane. This movie by its very nature wants you to look at the grand scheme of things by focusing on more intimate moments, but neither the big nor small pictures are charismatic enough to carry the film.
The RyMickey Rating: D+
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