Nicholas Lea | Through the Shattered Lens

My wife and I decided to watch SHATTERED (2007), also known as BUTTERFLY ON A WHEEL, on a whim tonight. We were browsing through Amazon Prime when I saw Gerard Butler on the preview, and that was enough for me to watch it. Sierra likes cheesy thrillers, which this definitely gives off that vibe, so she was all in as well.

SHATTERED is set in Chicago and opens on the Randall’s, a seemingly perfect little family, made up of Neil (Gerard Butler), Abby (Maria Bello), and their beautiful daughter, Sophie. Neil’s a successful, if somewhat ethically challenged businessman on the verge of a big promotion, and life is good. That is, until a stranger (Pierce Brosnan) literally pops up in the couple’s life out of nowhere, tells them that he’s kidnapped Sophie, and forces them to do whatever he says or he’ll kill the girl. One moment they’re emptying their bank accounts only to see the stranger burn the money, and the next they’re delivering incriminating business documents to the competition that will destroy Neil’s company and his career. As the demands escalate, we learn that Neil and Abby’s lives aren’t quite as perfect as initially presented. But who is this stranger, why is he doing this, and how far will he force them to go to save their daughter?

I enjoyed SHATTERED quite a bit. It’s one of those movies that rope you in with its intriguing premise… a mysterious stranger puts a happy couple through hell, and we don’t know why he’s doing it, but we want to! This type of story, if done well, always pulls me in even though we’ve seen it done many times before. It’s helped by the game cast. Pierce Brosnan is appropriately intense and menacing as the stranger, helping us believe that he’ll hurt their daughter if they don’t follow his orders. James Bond, he is not! I’m a big fan of Gerard Butler, and he’s good here. His character is not the badass that we’ve come to expect from him these days, and he’s not that great of a guy either, but he does a good job of portraying a morally compromised guy whose life is spiraling out of control. Maria Bello is equal to the task as well, as the desperate mother who’s forced to deal with her husband’s failures at the same time as she’s dealing with any mother’s worst nightmare.

At the end of the day, these types of thrillers live and die based on their “twists” at the end. I have to admit that I was able to figure out the first twist about halfway through the movie, but SHATTERED isn’t content with just one twist, and it seems to stumble somewhat as it continues on after the first big reveal. I don’t blame the writers for trying to come up with something unique to close us out, but it doesn’t feel entirely successful in light of all that’s transpired before. It might actually be worth a rewatch just to see how well it stacks up.

I’m glad I watched SHATTERED. It’s time-tested storyline and fast pace make it worth a viewing, especially if you’re a fan of the cast like I am. Just keep your expectations in check, and you should enjoy the ride!

One of my favorite films of 2017 was Before I Fall, which was kind of a combination of Mean Girls, Groudhog Day, and Happy Death Day. Two years later, it remains one of my favorite movies, even if I do end up crying whenever I watch it.

The film begins with an ordinary teenager named Samantha Kingston (Zooey Deutsch) waking up on February 12th. We follow her throughout her day and watch her deal with family, friends, teachers, and all the drama that goes along with all of that. We meet her boyfriend, Rob (Kian Lawley) and we automatically know that she needs to dump his jock ass. (Whenever we hear him glibly say, “Love ya,” it’s like nails on a chalkboard.) We all know that Sam should be with Kent (Logan Miller), who is sweet and sensitive and gives her a white rose for Cupid’s Day. We also meet and get to know her friends, Allie (Cynthia Wu), Elody (Medalion Rahimi), and especially Lindsay (Halston Sage). While being a close friend to Sam, Lindsay is still the stereotypical popular, mean girl, the one who decides who is accepted and who is destined to forever to be an outsider. Sam, on the other hand, is not a mean girl (or, at the very least, she’s a not-as-mean girl). Instead, she’s the girl who simply goes along with what everyone else is doing. She may not instigate any bullying but she doesn’t do anything to stop it either.

February 12th was the night that Sam had been planning on losing her virginity to Rob but Rob pretty much ruins that by getting drunk and acting like an asshole. Instead, at a party at Kent’s house, Sam watches as Lindsay humiliates an outsider named Juliet (Elena Kampouris). After leaving the party, Sam, Lindsay, Elody, and Allie drive down a dark road. They listen to music. They talk about how stupid everyone at the party was. And, eventually, the car crashes and….

Suddenly, Sam’s waking up in her bedroom! And it’s February 12th all over again! That’s right, Sam is in a time loop, destined to continually relive the final day of her life until she makes things right. In the 2010 novel that this film is based on, author Lindsay Olivier makes it pretty clear that each time Sam relives her day, she’s going through another stage of grief, moving from denial to acceptance. While the film doesn’t make that point quite as clearly as the book, it does do a good job of showing us how, each time that Sam is forced to relive that day, she comes out of it as a changed person. She discovers that Rob wasn’t worthy of her love and that Kent was. She discovers that her family wasn’t as terrible as she assumed. And, perhaps most importantly, she learns that being a friend does not mean excusing casual cruelty.

Watching Before I Fall is always an emotional experience for me. A lot of it is because I can relate to Sam. In many ways, back in high school, I was Sam. But, even beyond that, the theme of Before I Fall is universal. It doesn’t matter how old you are or what your background may be. It doesn’t matter if you were popular in high school or if you were one of the outsiders. Everyone — every single one of us — has done something that they regret. All of us have one day that we wish we could travel back to and do things differently.

Well-directed by Ry Russo-Young and featuring a lot of beautiful Canadian scenery (the film was shot in British Columbia and Vancouver), Before I Fall is a poignant and touching film. Zooey Deutch, Halston Sage, Cynthia Wu, and Medalion Rahimi are all believable as longtime friends and, to the film’s credit, no one — not even Lindsay — can be reduced to a mere stereotype. Before I Fall is a film about regret, denial, anger, acceptance, and finally, peace. No wonder it makes me cry.