The Deep End (2001)

Boring

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The Deep End (2001): Dir: Scott McGehee, David Siegel / Cast: Tilda Swinton, Goran Visnjic, Jonathan Tucker, Josh Lucas, Peter Donat: What does a mother do when she believes that her son committed murder? Her emotions travel severe grounds. She orders Derby to stay away from her son due to reckless behaviour. Despite the warning he shows up and encourages her son Beau to venture outside. The following morning she discovers Derby's body impaled on an anchor. To protect her son she dispatches the body. A stranger appears with a tape of Beau and Derby having sex then he blackmails her for money. The following day he arrives to the sight of her trying to revive her father after a heart attack and his guilt searches for options. Scott McGehee and David Siegel do well directing with a strong performance by Tilda Swinton as a mother under heavy duress from various angles. Goran Visnjic soon works with her while attempting to ease his partner's demands. He will ultimately do right but not without sacrifice. Fine supporting work by Jonathan Tucker as Beau, involved in a bad relationship that stems into tragedy. Josh Lucas plays Derby, his older sleazy lover who attempts to make financial gain to stay away from Beau until fate hits. It is a solid well made independent film that carries some power. How far may a parent go to protect their children? Score: 9 / 10

I had really high expectations before watching this movie, the reviews I read on both here and the cover of the DVD really had me excited. I love nothing more than a solid crime thriller but I was left really disappointed after watching this.The film seemed to rush everything to the point were I thought I'd missed something. The acting was terrible, it was like watching a bad TV movie. Tilda Swinton is wasted in this movie and seems to be just plodding along. The relationship with Margret and Alek is sooo bizarre one minute he's blackmailing her and 30mins later they are the best of friends. She falls for him without there being any reason for it happen. There's very little in the way of a police investigation over the death of Darby which seems very unrealistic. I still have no idea how Alek and his partner managed to get the video in order to blackmail Margret that all seemed very rushed as well.Very disappointing! it could have been soooo much better

This film is about a mother who would do anything to protect her seventeen year old son from getting into trouble."The Deep End" has a very touching plot. Storytelling may be simple and straightforward, but it delivers Tilda Swinton's struggles and desperation effectively. I can understand why she goes at length to protect her son, as any mother would. Her lonesome struggle is portrayed well, making me feel her pain. The changing relationship and mutual sympathy that develops between her and the blackmailer is also convincingly crafted."The Deep End" deserves to be seen and appreciated.

Once I had finished watching "The Deep End" I had to look at the Netflix packaging to find out what year it was made because I couldn't believe that in the year 2001 an entire suspense melodrama could be mounted on the lone homophobic premise, "Dad Can't Find Out!"This tale of a Mad-Mom (as in insane) who goes to great lengths to prevent the world from finding out that *gasp* her 17 year-old son is gay (she can't even say the word!) is like a perverse remake of the 1950's Loretta Young feature "Cause for Alarm!" in which an average housewife does numerous stupid things trying to conceal a death she had nothing to do with.Here the wonderful Tilda Swinton (a good deal less wonderful here) plays a mom whose protectiveness of her near-adult son borders on the psychotic. Indeed, as the film progressed and she acted wackier and wackier, I was sure that it would come out that she is unwholesomely possessive of her son. Sonny boy (sullen and closed-mouthed) is carrying on with a much older man and mom interferes in a way that even a 13 year old would find mortifying, much less a 17 year old. She operates under the assumption that her gay son has been seduced and lured into contact with this man, but from what we see, he is just a young man who has fallen in with a bad crowd and is drawn to an older guy. A creepy guy albeit, but when we later find out how absent the father is and would not understand his son's gayness no matter what, then subtext kicks in and you start to imagine that Sonny boy is drawn to bad boys and inappropriate partners for a reason. Mom, however is hearing none of this. Even when said son wrecks a car drunk driving with his lover, the mom convinces herself that it is the sole fault of the 30 year-old man, not her son who was actually behind the wheel. Her son seems troubled and she seems like a reactionary nut, but is this what the film focuses on? No. The film has the creepy older gay guy accidentally die on their property and mom spends the entire film covering it up because she thinks in some way her son is involved. Since this family is severely screwed up (to me, that is, the filmmakers seem to think this affluent family of non-communicative, isolated individuals is worth protecting from scary gamblin', screwin' and blackmailin' homosexuals) she never actually asks the son what happened, calls the police, or even wonders how she could think her son capable of murder. The son mourns his ex lover for about ten minutes and never loses much sleep over the possibility that he may have been the last one to see him alive. No, everything is a whirlwind of dance classes, music lessons, baseball games and laundry for this bunch. Who has time to talk?After a series of plot contrivances too ridiculous to recount (among them an empathetic blackmailer who doesn't have the heart for the job...oh yeah, there are lots of those around), an alarming amount of people pay with their lives for the sole purpose of keeping Sonny boy's big, dark secret from daddy and maintaining the privileged class status quo. Oh, brother! Much of the stupidity that preceded it would have been forgivable if at the end there was perhaps an awareness on the mother's part that the distasteful acts she engaged in were not equal to what she thought she was protecting: the problem was not that her son was gay, nor that he rebelliously got mixed up with a guy almost twice his age, the problem was that her son's father would not understand and that she raised her son in an environment where who he was was not as important as what he appeared to be to others. She was less concerned with his lying, underage drinking and hanging out with guys with possible mob ties than she was with his being gay and "outed." What are the biggest moral transgressions here?"The Deep End" is so woefully shallow and is content to sacrifice psychological depth for artificially earned suspense.I can't remember when I've been so put off by the unintended offensiveness of a film's premise. Loathed it.