BEFORE: We went out for lunch at Smorgasburg, which is a weekly collection of food stands in Williamburg, Brooklyn - but getting there was problematic since we live closest to the "L" subway train, and they're finally doing the repairs on the tunnels to repair the damage from Superstorm Sandy (7 years ago!). Initially they were going to completely shut down this subway line for 16 months, but now they've found a way to repair it without shutting it down - but the train runs only every 20 minutes between Brooklyn and Manhattan (every 10 minutes in Brooklyn) and we needed the Manhattan-bound train to get closer to Smorgasburg.
But once we were there, and after fighting through the giant crowds of hipsters (initially I thought the day would be overcast, which would have meant smaller crowds, but the weather turned out to be great, so there you go) I got to enjoy a wide variety of foods, like a pork taco with chicharrones, a ramen burger (hamburger with a bun made of noodles), some yakitori (scallops and pork belly grilled on skewers) and a meatball parm hero (not very exotic, but still delicious). So it's like a weekly food festival, which sounds great, but then the high prices and huge crowds make me remember why we only go there about once every two or three years.
Ron Livingston carries over again from "The End of the Tour", and though the IMDB doesn't mention it, so does one other actor.
THE PLOT: A crime thriller told backwards - reversing day by day through a week - following a local sheriff's quest to unlock the mystery of three small-town criminals and a bank heist gone wrong.
AFTER: This is a crime film with a twist, and that's all in how the events are shown to the audience, with the days in reverse order. This gimmick was most notably seen in the film "Memento", as a man with no short-term memory tries to unravel the mystery of his wife's death, and so he has to leave himself a lot of notes with the clues, he even has some tattooed on his body. That film worked because at the start of the film / end of the story, we the audience knew just as much as the lead character (nothing) and at the end of the film / start of the story, we've pieced together nearly everything - although my "solution" for that film seems to be different from the one that most viewers have agreed upon.
So when it's used well, this is a technique that reveals more information as the film moves forward, even though we're going backwards in time. The dialogue has to refer to the past events without giving away the whole store, and irony is achieved when characters talk about the future, and we the audience have advance knowledge regarding whether that future came to pass, or notably did not. I'm happy to report this is a film that uses the technique well, because we are forced to re-evaluate what happened when we see it happen, and occasionally it's not what we were expecting at all. Now, if there were no surprises while using this technique, I'd be tempted to say that an editor or directing was using it just to try to inject some life into a dull screenplay, and that's not the case here. But it is possible that someone tried to write this story with the surprises at the end, and found that just didn't work, that they didn't feel motivated by the story or came too far out of left field. With the days in backwards order, on the other hand, I'm almost praying for a last-minute (first-minute?) surprise to come along and shake things up.
In some ways, just getting a handle on what happened / will happen in this film is a bit of a beast, but just like a bank robbery, that's OK if there's a good payoff. All we know at first is that something went down, and the town sheriff is looking for his brother. People are hiding out, there's a bag of money, and (because of the structure) more characters get added to the story as the bodies start turning up, because the next / prior day, those people are still alive and are probably important to the story. Eventually we learn what the big scheme was, who was responsible for it, but it's wheels-within-wheels and maybe not everything is as clear-cut as we first thought. Everything could be important, so you've got to pay close attention.
This is not a technique that I would want to see used very often, because I wouldn't want it to become a trend or get played out - but once in a while, when warranted, it's OK.
NITPICK POINT: The town's judge also owns the local bank? This seems like a strange combination of careers. I'd like to know how many jurists also dabble in the world of finance - isn't that a conflict of interest?
Also starring Rainn Wilson (last seen in "Hesher"), Benjamin Walker (last seen in "In the Heart of the Sea"), Stephanie Sigman (last seen in "Spectre"), John Michael Higgins (also carrying over from "The End of the Tour" via footage from "The Late Shift"), Mark Rendall (last seen in "Charlie Bartlett"), Rob Corddry (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Wyatt Russell (last seen in "Everybody Wants Some!!"), Adam Pally (last seen in "Don't Think Twice"), Matt Landry, Isabel Dove, Neil Whitely, Angela Vint, Julie Khaner.
RATING: 5 out of 10 high-school football stories
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