A Thousand Cuts (2012)★★★☆☆

I swear when I first saw this movie I liked it much better. Maybe I was just feeling more generous. It was a little hard to get through this time…but I think the story is interesting enough that it earns three stars instead of two. It’s close, though.

This is one of those films where the performances feel kind of on opposite ends of the spectrum. Michael A. Newcomer as Lance delivered an over-the-top performance while Michael O’Keefe’s performance as Frank was a bit more under-the-top. On either end it was hard to believe they really cared about what they were saying.

But I truly liked the overarching story here! I thought conceptually there was a lot of really interesting stuff here, and I thought the dialogue wasn’t terrible! You’re given a lot of material to really dislike Lance at the beginning, presumably to make his plight less sympathetic…but “it’s more complicated than that,” to steal a line from the film itself.

It’s hard for me to strongly recommend watching or avoiding this one, but if you’ve got a little bit of time and are looking for something to keep you mostly occupied, this will probably do. And it really does pull itself together for the last ten minutes or so.