THE SON OF NO ONE: Out Now To Rent and Buy

The Son Of No One (2011)
Directed by: Dito Montiel

Starring: Al Pacino, Channing Tatum, Katie Holmes, Ray Liotta, Tracy Morgan

FILM: The Son Of No One

RATING: 15

RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 29 mins

Out Now To Rent and Buy

WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?

                                           [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuVwb9nLZ20[/youtube]

In this thriller, Jonathan is a cop who gets in over his head when he is assigned to re-open a double homicide case in his Queens neighbourhood. An anonymous source feeds new information on the long-unsolved murders to a local reporter. This leads to evidence suggesting a possible cover-up by the former lead detective. As Jonathan digs deeper into the assignment, a dark secret about the case emerges, which threatens his life and his family. Also stars Tracy Morgan, Katie Holmes and Ray Liotta.

The Hughes Verdict!

Fresh from seeing Ray Liotta in The River Murders, here he comes back again onto my small screen with the very slow and quite dull The Son Of No One.

I really wanted to like this film. I mean take a look at the cast and it gets you all excited at what this film could be like. Even the star lead of Channing Tatum intrigued me because since I sat down and watched 21 Jump Street last week (contender of best film of 2012), Tatum is someone who I like, even though I was not fussed on the first film I saw him in which was the street fighting film called er……”Fighting“!

Ironically the director of that film Dito Montiel is also behind the lens of this police drama and while Montiel has shown in the past that he can deliver with the drama, take his 2006 hit A Guide To Recognising Your Saints as an example, here he tries his best to get some  feeling into this long overdrawn saga that plays more like a soap opera than a high punch emotion drive!.

“No One cares” utters Detective Stanford played by the always watchable master Al Pacino. Its a saying that comes back to not only haunt the characters but also the film itself. Here he says it to a young teen by the name of Jonathan White, a confused young human being who has just killed two people. One by total self-defence which makes a mockery of the film’s “cover up” angle, I mean why the feck cover it up???????? and then by killing a junkie who tries to blackmail him for the first murder…yes the film is a confused morale outrage. Being a friend of the family, Stanford covers up the murder cases and utters those words….something which sadly does come back to haunt them.

You know what pisses me off? When I was a young lad, I was skinny with a shaved head….now I am older, I am still bald but now have a beer belly because of the many beers I had with the boys. Why is it in films, the young lads grow up to have a six pack and ripped muscles. I mean look at Michael Myers in the Zombie remake, what the feck did they feed that kid in the asylum. In this, the film skips to the year 2006 (having started in 1986) and now our boy has grown to look like Tatum, who is now a cop himself and finds himself married to the wife of Tom Cruise, no not in the film but the character is played by Katie Holmes of course.

Life is grand until like always the past comes back to bite him on the arse. Some local reporter (Juliette Binoche) gets some mystery letters suggesting things about the past and soon Jonathan’s life falls apart in more ways than one! Before I skip further, I just need to say how wasted Binoche is in this. Why hire a good actress in a worthless role?

Anyway, I wanted to love this film and was looking forward for its deep mystery but it asks the viewer to take some massive gulps of belief to keep the story going forward. I mean for a start like I said the cover up was no need for and now we are asking the question into who could be sending the letters. Could it be Police Captain Marion Mathers played by Ray Liotta, who plays by type, and I mean he plays the same character we have seen many times before. He does act suspicious at times? But then it could be Vincent, a childhood friend who helped him cover up the murders. I mention Vincent because he is probably the best thing in this film which is unbelievable because he is played by Tracy Morgan who to be fair is brilliant here and makes you forget the car crash that was Cop Out.

By the time you go through all the suspects, you even begin to even doubt Katie Holmes? Would his own wife betray him?

Montiel throws every issue you can think of towards the plot to bring tons of sympathy and The Son Of No One is one of those genre films that if you love these that seem to come out now and again, then you may get a great kick out of it. Its silly to say that the acting is top notch because it should be with whose involved and I am rewarding the extra star because of that.

I do seem to be apply that the mystery of the film is worth the watch and I may contradict myself here and say its not but then the film got me watching right to the very end. So I am stuck in the middle with this film, its not the great film I expected it to be and yet it kept me there until the end. So what I will say is that I can see many enjoying the film for what it is, it has a sort of Mystic River kind of vibe but also for some, they will be left cold by this film and in the words of Detective Stanford….”No One Cares”….and by the time the credits roll some of you won’t do too…………..

Award an extra star for yourself if you get the buzz out of these crime dramas……..

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