The Rover

I love pretty much anything the production company A24 (The Spectacular Now, Under the Skin and among many others) makes and distributes but I felt kind of disappointed. The movie is set in a post-apocalypse world after a global economic collapse ten years in the future. The thing is we really don't know anything beyond that. The story, that premise and even the characters are really never explored and we only get snippets of their character and their past. This is the main problem I had with the film. I am all for slow burning, little dialogue films but this one felt the loss of substance when it came to the story and characters. David Michod directs this bleak and deserted world and he does a great job establishing that tone throughout and that one was thing I appreciated. Guy Pearce plays the lead and he is always awesome. You are probably wondering about Robert Pattinson. Ever since he was in "Twilight", I have always said he will break out out of everyone and be a great actor, sorry Taylor Launter. I liked Pattinson's performance in this, despite not knowing to much about him, he plays a slightly mentally disabled southern hick and he pulls it off. The supporting cast is really good to so I have no complaints. The cinematography is gorgeous and really captures the wide open, desolate space of this world after a economic collapse especially in it's wide and tracking shots. The pace of this film is a bit slow. I loved the first thirty minutes and I was engrossed but afterwards it was hard to keep my attention. I hate doing this,because its disrespectful, but I fell asleep…three times. Since the story was never explored, I woke up all three times and still knew what was going on. It was just that boring. I really loved the music. It was eery, haunting and western like and I dug every second of its originality and it was a better character than what was being portrayed on screen. As you can see, I am not completely crapping on this movie as I saw many positives, but the story and characters didn't really do it for me. I might need to explore this film again as I probably had a bad day or something but I have to grade my first reactions. I love A24 and will continue to watch anything they touch but I don't recommend this one. A lot of people love this movie, so I am welcoming the hate. 4/10
(Review by Chase Lee)