Blackway (2015)

Undescribable Perfection

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

With the names involved we had high hopes for this movie. It was so very awful. It seems they just drive around looking for Black way to be told they shouldn't look for him and they drive around looking for him more until the undramatoc conclusion.

I must be too much of a realist, but movies like this one make no sense to me. A woman comes back to her hometown when her mother dies and comes in contact with the town psycho (a former sheriff) who everyone is scared s***less of. Most everyone in this logging town is either gutless or a criminal. So the town nut-job has free rein to rape, steal, kill and generally be in charge. I kept thinking, since there is not much that is decent in this town, the mystery is why doesn't someone just put a bullet in the baddie's head and be done with it? But then, there'd be no premise for the movie. I also kept thinking why would actors the likes of Anthony Hopkins, Hal Holbrook and Ray Liotta sign on to do this movie? That's the real mystery.

An old man without a plan, a young woman without a plan, and a young man without a plan go into the woods unjustifiably confident of meting out justice to a psychopathic maniac. It's a formula movie that for some reason does not stick to the formula. We all recognize the set up (innocent woman terrorized), we all know what is coming (this one's got gumption and fights back) and we're all rooting for the payoff (cocky bad guy gets humbled) but in this movie, the payoff is so low key as to be almost non-existent. There's lots of driving in trucks through the woods, lots of old men telling tales about bad things that happened long ago and a lot of Anthony Hopkins standing around looking morose. Other than that, not much. It ends abruptly, and seriously looks like they cut the final 10 minutes from the story. A disappointing script for all involved, especially Hopkins and Liota. Their talents are not apparent here at all.

This was an interesting little movie. The actors were top notch. It's always nice to see Hopkins, and it was really swell to see Holbrook in what, most likely, is one of his last films. The movie, itself, had issues. It was very formulaic and predictable, but I was okay with that. There are so many movies that are formulaic and predicable, which many consider to be the best of all time. For instance, I don't think for one moment anyone has a doubt that Dorothy will make it back home by the end of Wizard of Oz.I could go on. I've learned over the years to just sit back, relax, and let movies wash over you--especially movies like Blackway that have nothing short of outstanding production values. In particular, the cinematography was just phenomenal. This wasn't a movie made on a soundstage. Overall, I enjoyed this movie. Again, it wasn't fantastic, and it didn't blow my mind. It was, however, a slickly-made outing with fantastic actors and great scenery. Ray Liotta was creepy, as well.