“Best Laid Plans”
Year: 2012
Director: David Blair
Stars: Stephen Graham, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Maxine Peake
Studio: Well-Go USA Entertainment
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 108 Mins.
It’s amazing, how I’m always drawn to any film that involves cage fighting. “Best Laid Plans” is no exception. Maybe it’s the fact I like the UFC so much. But still the film also had another interesting selling point. The trailer actually looked good.
“Best Laid Plans is based on the John Steinbeck novel “Of Mice and Men”. The film is set in Nottingham, where the film follows the relationships between Danny, who is a thug and Joseph is a big man who has the mental capacity of a seven year old. When Danny ends up with a huge debt to one of the local crime bosses, he is forced to manipulate Joseph into a world of underground cage fighting. By doing that, Danny is hoping to get the money he needs to pay off the debt.
Never have I’ve seen a drama that was flat out awful and mean spirited towards its characters. This is further proof to never trust the film’s trailer.
David Blair’s direction was very dull. Everything moves at a slow pace. The reason that it moves that way, he doesn’t try to inject any life into the film. I was waiting for that moment that something going to happen, where you are suddenly interested in the film. It never happens, because the performances were very dull. Do I think that it’s the cast fault that the performances are dull? No, it’s simply the combination of Blair’s direction and this very bad screenplay that makes the acting bad.
Chris Green’s screenplay is simply dreadful. What I hate about this screenplay, your main character is flat out unlikable. I truly hated the main character Danny so much, that I was starting to become very angry with the film. Green doesn’t give you any reason to like him. He makes the character a drug addict that is taking advantage of his person with a mental disability for his own personal gain for almost the entire story. It made me angry and it might actually offend some people. Also, I didn’t like how he made the relationship between the two main characters so mean spirited. It completely took away from the story and the film. It would have been nice to have developed these characters and their relationship in a nicer way instead of treating them with such cruelty, which the screenwriter does with this story in my opinion. I almost shut this film off completely because of it.
Maybe it wasn’t intended to be that way when the screenwriter wrote it, if so I do apologize for it. This is just my perspective and thoughts about what I saw.
This is the first time in a long time, where I really felt so negative about a film to the point that I wanted to shut the film. Normally, I wouldn’t be saying this about a film, but I’ve never been angrier at a film like this film. “Best Laid Plans” is one those films that feels borderline mean spirited than entertaining.
Review Rating: One Star
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