Intense but chaotic, complex yet problematic. The Riot Club is a very unusual movie that starts out in a way, but then it takes a total different one without you even imagining it. It touches a wide arrange of themes and tones and manages to make them all feel coherent.
The film really succeeds on many levels. Firstly be it light, slapstick or pitch black humor it has many laughs in it than never fail to deliver. Furthermore it descends into drama the more you go on with it and it touches some real, intense situations that deliver genuine tension and suspense. You really don't know how far it will go and boy does it go far. It really surprised me so many times. Through the second and third act, characters are placed in deeper and darker moral situations that feel very grounded and because of that succeed in giving palpable humanity to the movie. As soon as you think you've figured out where the film will stop and make its point you will be immediately astonished in seeing the next step. You will follow a set of characters that you think you know, but the more you go on the more you will realize you were wrong. The whole ordeal is made possible by brilliant performances across the board, there is no one that stands out because everybody here is on A-Game. The direction also feels very solid.
The Riot Club does have many missteps unfortunately. The editing is very out of place and messes up the first act, which gets very confusing at times. The screenplay has a hard time at rounding out all the characters coherently, many of them bounce up and down a couple times and I couldn't figure them out easily in those moments. The message of the movie is a screamed at you from the screen, but even if this is done a couple of times I still could not figure out 100% what to take away from it. Yet I thought the worst part of it was the ending: totally meaningless to me. I may have lost something in the way, but I really didn't get the closure I was expecting.
I got to feel on the edge of my seat multiple times, I was surprised multiple time and I laughed multiple times, yet I also looked kind of strangely at the screen multiple times.
The film really succeeds on many levels. Firstly be it light, slapstick or pitch black humor it has many laughs in it than never fail to deliver. Furthermore it descends into drama the more you go on with it and it touches some real, intense situations that deliver genuine tension and suspense. You really don't know how far it will go and boy does it go far. It really surprised me so many times. Through the second and third act, characters are placed in deeper and darker moral situations that feel very grounded and because of that succeed in giving palpable humanity to the movie. As soon as you think you've figured out where the film will stop and make its point you will be immediately astonished in seeing the next step. You will follow a set of characters that you think you know, but the more you go on the more you will realize you were wrong. The whole ordeal is made possible by brilliant performances across the board, there is no one that stands out because everybody here is on A-Game. The direction also feels very solid.
The Riot Club does have many missteps unfortunately. The editing is very out of place and messes up the first act, which gets very confusing at times. The screenplay has a hard time at rounding out all the characters coherently, many of them bounce up and down a couple times and I couldn't figure them out easily in those moments. The message of the movie is a screamed at you from the screen, but even if this is done a couple of times I still could not figure out 100% what to take away from it. Yet I thought the worst part of it was the ending: totally meaningless to me. I may have lost something in the way, but I really didn't get the closure I was expecting.
I got to feel on the edge of my seat multiple times, I was surprised multiple time and I laughed multiple times, yet I also looked kind of strangely at the screen multiple times.