The busy nature of the movie doesn’t make it work any better. But if you’re a “Game of Thrones” fan who wants to see Huisman play the sexiest air traffic controller alive, “2:22” has that. As strange things happen in the world it just comes off more like he’s posing than presenting a curious intellectual thought, and he isn’t given much of a sense of humor to add a few more dashes to charisma. Like the other human beings in this movie, his character registers quickly as wooden, and isn’t able to change that fate. “2:22” does not make a compelling case for rising actor Huisman as a sturdy lead, despite being shown everything he can do, from working out in his apartment, biking through city streets, or furrowing his brow while picking up his keys.
By the end it does, and for a wayward cheesy purpose that I will not spoil, but also cannot say I was that in the least amused by. Halfway through “2:22” you’re watching it just to see if it will ultimately make sense. There is scant awe as the movie starts to create trends from what is going on, which feels like it’s more in service of screenwriters trying to pull off eight tricks at once. Like "The Number 23" or " Knowing" before it, "2:22" breaks an unwritten rule about coincidences in movies, where if details in the script are made so obvious, of course patterns will arise. Director Paul Currie has a handsome look for the movie but does not have the vision to make all of these magic beans grow into one captivating entity. Is Dylan going crazy? Is everything he’s seeing every day just a coincidence, a one in a billion chance? There are even more threads that are created, involving a murder that happened 30 years ago at Grand Central station. In the eloquence of this unnatural script, the humdinger exchange goes: “I was on that flight.” “I nearly killed you.” “No, you saved me.” Later on, Sarah’s jealous artist boyfriend Jonas ( Sam Reid) puts on a hologram display that shows the exact images Dylan has been seeing.
There’s a meet-cute which is one for the books, in which he meets an art curator named Sarah ( Teresa Palmer, in a definitively thankless role) whose plane he almost caused to hit another plane on the runway. There’s an interesting point to explore in this concept about how things seem to run into pattern or repetition, but instead this movie is aimed towards a love story. City ambience or something else? Even stranger, he sees very similar patterns at Grand Central station-couples hugging, a pregnant woman, a group of school kids-and at the exact time of 2:22pm, some type of malfunction happens at the station, glass randomly shattering or light bulbs exploding above. When biking to Grand Central Station in the mornings, he notices different people doing the same thing in the same order-women laughing, a person saying “can I help you?”, a car horn, etc. It helps him do his job where he is able to see flight plans with a savant quality (or at least that’s how it’s presented), but it starts to pop up elsewhere in his life. Michiel Huisman plays an air traffic controller who notices the patterns in life, as stated by his clunky opening voiceover. Or, as with much of this overwrought movie, maybe it means very little at all.
With time titles rarely making its way into any medium, what are the chances of two on the same day and for even numbers? Maybe it means something. It arrives to theaters and VOD the same day as a JAY-Z album that also favors numbers, 4:44. The most memorable facet of chintzy coincidence thriller “2:22” is its strange timing.
0 kommentar(er)
