Suicide is bad...

...but it's 2:37 and you know what that means.

brutal unflinching violence!

I suppose it says something about Murali K Thalluri's 2:37 that I keep thinking about it. I just wish Thalluri hadn't of blatantly copied Elephant's aesthetic style (long continuous shots, time shifts, operatic score) because there is definitely some great stuff in there. I mean, as much as the film apes Elephant, there's no denying that Elephant had a great style and it comes up trumps here too. There's also no denying that these actors, Teresa Palmer, Marni Spillane, Sam Harris, Joel Mackenzie, Clementine Mellor, Charles Baird and Frank Sweet, do very good stuff when you consider the only role that any of these seven people had prior to this movie was Palmer's illustrious debut as "Pool Party People" in Wolf Creek.


But, like so many movies this year with ensemblish casts (well, there's this, Little Miss Sunshine, Fast Food Nation and especially Babel), the film has too many strands and then doesn't finish them. It was downright insulting to give viewers the Teresa Palmer storyline to just end it without any explanation (same goes for those other movies. What happened to all these people?!)

And, then, again, I can see all these faults and problems and they bug me, but... but... I think it's a good well-made film. It's at least trying to be about something, but whether it gets to it's intended destination is up to each individual viewer. It's definitely a film that, much like Hard Candy that I watched last night, you should probably see just so you can tell people you have when they ask and when they see it on the shelf and wonder why it's rated R18+.

That brings up another question. Did 2:37 deserve the harshest rating possible (for a non-porno flick) or is the R18+ rating keeping it's intended audience from seeing the film. My theory is that most teenagers wouldn't see an arty Australian movie anyway, so the rating is irrelevent. That ending though sure is nasty and might actually pursuade somebody to not do it.

Aagh. This movie is so frustrating. But, I suppose, that's a good thing in this day and age that a movie can incite debate such as 2:37 has. Still, Elephant was much better. Final Grade, after much deliberation, B-. 2:37 is available now on DVD in Australia.

By the way, I did randomly decide to write this entry purely because I looked at the computer clock and it was 2:37.