Who’s in it?: Mark Wahlberg (The Funky Bunch, The Departed), Rachel Weisz (The Mummy, Brothers Bloom), Stanley Tucci (The Terminal, Captain America: The First Avenger) and Michael Imperioli (TV’s Soprano’s)
Who Directed it?: Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Heavenly Creatures)
Damn, Peter Jackson, I was really looking forward to this one. But no, you had to go and let me down, didn’t you? I haven’t read the book by Alice Sebold so I can’t make comparisons between the two but watching the movie you could just tell it wasn’t all there. Not that its a bad thing. After all, when you’re adapting a book into a movie, it’s nearly impossible to get it all on screen. Some shit just doesn’t translate from book to screenplay to motion picture.
If you haven’t seen this yet but want to, I won’t ruin much of the premise other than to say a little girl gets killed by the not so friendly neighborhood child killer. The story is told from the little girl’s POV after she has died, watching her family deal with her death before she moves on. On the whole, its obviously a downer from beginning to end. It’s fairly engaging but at the same time, watching it just seems like there is so much missing from it. My wife filled me in on all that was in the novelization of The Lovely Bones and it was missing some of it and for Jacob’s sake, if you’re gonna make a movie on this subject, have the stones to properly translate the material.
The acting was hit and miss. Tucci is awesome as always. Weisz is one of the most under rated actresses in Hollywood and Wahlberg is fine. That dude sure has come a long way since the friggin’ Funky Bunch, huh? But can someone please tell Michael Imperioli that he plays the same arrogant character in every movie/show he is in and he isn’t nearly as interesting as he thinks he is.
The only real redeeming quality I got out of this was that it reminded me an awful lot of The End of Lost. I went in expecting this to hit hard emotionally. I have a daughter and with all the a-holes in this world it’s scary to think what can happen in the blink of an eye. This movie will make you think about the hidden dangers that face our children. But really this is why I was so disappointed. Part of me expected to bring it to tears, but it just….didn’t. God damn Return of the King had waaaaay more emotional impact that this one.
6/10
Would I recommend this movie?: It’s sad and depressing and will be hard to watch for some people, especially if you have children. But if you’ve read the book, you might be a little disappointed. Overall it lacks the emotional impact it needed to deliver at the end.