Trust (2011)

Just perfect...

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

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

(Warning this review may contain some spoilers)I recommend this movie to every single friend of mine who has a child, how Internet has become a double edge tool and how some creepy yet smart people can use it to their own sick benefits is quite scary. This films details how a single perverted mind can destroy a loving family, on how the father ( played by Clive Owen in one of his best roles) gets obsessed on finding the guy that raped his daughter, his focused is getting "justice" done and forgets on what's more important helping to cope with her. I honestly felt shocked on how realistic this film was on how raw it's emotions are towards pedophiles and showing the public who they disguise themselves as ordinary people and that's the toughest part knowing they are not this malevolent ugly men or women they can look like simple likable persons in the outside. Everyone involved in this movie did a phenomenal job and I have to give mayor points to Liana Liberato her acting is outstanding and I wish her the best on a bright career. To me the ending is the absolute truth this people may be loving parents with good marriages and most likely never touch there own children that doesn't mean they are sick and true monsters they just know how to hide their true selves, as an old Japanese saying we have 3 faces one to the public another one to our loved ones and the last one to ourselves.

A teenage girl (Liana Liberato) is targeted by an online sexual predator (David Schwimmer).What makes this story great is how real it is, how emotional, and to some degrees how gritty. It is not like the sort of sob story you might see on Lifetime, but something that may be real. We have Clive Owen torn between sexualizing people and the protection of his own daughter. He never actually sexualizes, of course, but we see the temptation is there and it is one his business partner freely accepts.And that is the beauty of the story. It is not just the story of a young girl and her dealing with what happens to her. It is also a critique of society at large. We can condemn a man who preys on children over the Internet, and at the same time live in a society that sees women as sex objects and sells clothes by using models who do not wear any...

I'm with Goodfella218 on this movie. I just watched it last night on YouTube, and I can frankly say that I was not at all impressed. What, at first, seemed like an honest attempt to show a story about a teenage girl falling victim to an online predator quickly changed into a political campaign aimed at vilifying every adult man who has ever had an extra-platonic interest in an adolescent girl since the beginning of time. The ulterior motives of this movie were exactly what Dr. Judith Levine warned Americans about when she was promoting her book titled "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex" back in 2002. The storyline plays too much like a soap opera and it almost mirrors the 1981 Luke and Laura vehicle used on "General Hospital" in which Luke raped Laura and then married her. There is even a tacky scene in it in which they show the inside of the female protagonist's genitalia while she is being examined at the hospital.If you want to see a real movie about online predation, then see "Strangeland" instead. The girl in that movie is a year older than the female protagonist in "Trust," but she actually goes through the horrors of being kidnapped and raped, whereas in "Trust," the young girl named Annie has multiple opportunities to walk away from her situation. Also, at the same time, "Strangeland" strongly questions the Puritanical establishment's position on teenage girls straying outside their own age circles in search of romance, which makes it even more interesting. Although it becomes blatantly clear that European societies embrace the idea of girls in their early-to-mid teens having older suitors more readily than Americans do so when you compare American films like "Trust" and "Hard Candy" with European films like "Beau Pere" and "Ginger and Cinammon," the argument over whether or not an adult man who takes an attraction to an adolescent girl is a pedophile continues to be a heated debate among experts to this very day here in the U.S. Even though David Schwimmer did a splendid job at playing the protagonist in "Duane Hopwood," his role as a movie director in "Trust" leaves so very much to be desired. Another major flaw in this movie is that there is a scene in which Annie's father implied that all would have been well if the "Charlie" character who hooked up with his daughter online had been a 15-year old boy instead of a 30-something-year-old man. Not necessarily so. I once saw a story on the news about a 15-year old boy out in California who threatened to kill his 14-year old girlfriend with a knife if she didn't have his baby. After he was caught and arrested, he was sentenced to go to some luxury summer camp. I've seen David Schwimmer interviewed on the subject of how our nation's age of consent laws are written, and he comes across as a my-way-or-the-highway type of person on the subject matter in that he supports higher ages of consent in every state and tougher prison sentences for violating those ages of consent. He refuses to see the entire broad picture and this film is proof on its face of this idiosyncrasy of his. The idea that Annie in this movie would be as submissive as she was with the older man who had sex with her is so unrealistic, because most adolescent girls even as young as 12 years old have gotten their rejection skills down to a fine art.David Schwimmer manipulated the plot of the story to depict the characters in it the way he wanted his audience to perceive them rather than how they would be in the real world. For example, did you notice that despite the fact that the villain in this film, CHARLIE, also had liaisons with other girls Annie's age just like he did with Annie, somehow Annie and these other girls miraculously never got pregnant? It's like David Schwimmer devised this movie's plot in this manner so that his efforts to portray these teenage girls as gullible and easily manipulated innocents wouldn't be inadvertently undermined. When I was 16 years old, I caught this one 15-year old girl I knew in a parking lot acting real cozy with a 30-something-year-old man and, believe me, she was no victim of grooming. I know this for a fact, because this same girl sexually harassed me for three years when I was in high school. If her parents had prosecuted this older man on charges of statutory rape, I would have testified as a witness for the defense in a heartbeat. "Trust" is a sensationalistic piece of commercial tripe to be avoided at all costs. It's just another cheap effort to urge legislators to raise the age of consent to 21 nationwide here in the U.S. David Schwimmer needs to go back to acting. Obviously, his activism in rape awareness has gone to his head, and this movie reflects such fanaticism of his. And, yes, I do realize that online predators are a serious problem in our nation and throughout the world, but I don't think a movie about this subject matter is an appropriate arena for a movie producer to be promoting his pedophile panic propaganda. This is not exclusively an age-related crime. As a matter of fact, not too long ago I heard a story about a 13-year old girl who posed as a 13-year old boy in an online chat room to trick a 12-year old girl into having a lesbian relationship with her. This 13-year old girl arranged to meet with the 12-year old girl, and she dressed up like a boy to fool the 12-year old girl into having sex with her. When the truth came out, the 12-year old girl was devastated. Fortunately, criminal charges were brought against the 13-year old girl. Why couldn't David Schwimmer have done a film about a story like that instead?

Schwimmer crams a lot into his directorial debut: an elaborate and nasty grooming process, social (guilt) references through the workplace and colleague of the (girl's) father, the son who is seemingly favored, revenge sentiments and fantasies, et cetera and so on. So, it aspires to thrill as much as it wants to be dramatically apt, but instead becomes a laborious mix of TV-movie drama meets rape & revenge flick (where the revenge is only in the mind). For me, it never really took off.Liberato's acting ranges from okay to very good, Owen plays pretty much okay, but convinces most in the final scene, and the rest of the cast keeps up nicely. And although no less than the first half hour is just about the grooming, it still didn't convince me somehow. Then there's a lot of going back and forth between the different characters of the father and daughter, the investigation, and back to the father / mother relationship; it all felt a bit messy.All in all not bad, really, but also not a stunner by a long shot. 5 out of 10.