This film could have been an eight or a nine. It's well acted, shot and directed. Loved that opening shot. I found that the story events stretched credulity just the right amount for a thriller. And I loved the gimmick of having high school level English the common language of the main characters, who would otherwise be unable to communicate with each other.
The drawback of this hyper-realistic, one-shot filming technique is that everything has to happen in real time--including the getting-to-know-you first hour, which is essential to make the improbable things that Victoria does in the second hour believable. So I understand the dilemma.
The problem is that this first hour of chit-chat and bonding is excruciatingly slow. Watching it was like being the only sober person at a drunken frat party. Clearly, a lot of people (and certainly the critics) didn't mind.
Me, I watched it and at about the 30-minute mark I found myself thinking, "And *that's* why we have cuts in movies. So that it doesn't take two-and-a-half hours to tell a 50-minute story."
The drawback of this hyper-realistic, one-shot filming technique is that everything has to happen in real time--including the getting-to-know-you first hour, which is essential to make the improbable things that Victoria does in the second hour believable. So I understand the dilemma.
The problem is that this first hour of chit-chat and bonding is excruciatingly slow. Watching it was like being the only sober person at a drunken frat party. Clearly, a lot of people (and certainly the critics) didn't mind.
Me, I watched it and at about the 30-minute mark I found myself thinking, "And *that's* why we have cuts in movies. So that it doesn't take two-and-a-half hours to tell a 50-minute story."