This film presents an exaggerated version of an event that has happened to many people, i.e. being robbed and the feeling of violation that burglary has caused.
In this film, a depressed nursing assistant Ruth (Melanie Lynskey) debates how she felt when she discovered there was a burglary in her house, and that her grandmother’s silver was taken away along with her laptop. While all stuff does not have a high monetary value, the film makes it clear that monetary loss is not the main issue in coping with burglary but an invasion of privacy and violation of personal sphere. Ruth then engages in an investigation of those responsible for the theft due to failure of the police in capturing them or even expressing interest in launching a proper investigation. This investigation continues throughout the movie, with many perpetrators and their families ending up dead. In the investigation Ruth launches, her annoying neighbour Tony (Elijah Wood) joins only to discover, as the movie approaches its end, there are mutual feelings between this (strange) couple.
While some of the statements provide easy identification (sense of violation of privacy and home because of the burglary) and while some events engage with challenging the work of the police (that indeed not always engages with burglaries but rather shifts responsibility to the house owner), the film is somewhat slow. While I do not mind films that explore issues in more depth and where the play develops slowly, I do not think this movie will satisfy majority of viewers, and especially not younger ones. As we know, attention span has gone down for all of us, however younger generations are particularly prone to this.
However, this is not my major issue with the film because I do not think we should adjust everything to new generations solely because they can’t keep the attention span. In a way, I think we should find a way to force them to engage with media content more and to consumer more diverse content (including books, newspapers, etc.). My major issue is the lack of depth. While the movie starts brilliantly and raises some good questions, it then moves towards comedy. Someone may say this is good because it provides diversity of content, but for my taste the change was abrupt. I would have preferred a psychological drama/thriller that explores issues in more depth and shows how people learn (or fail to learn) to cope with burglary. I know, from a personal experience, that it is not an easy process especially when you feel the whole world has left you down (which this film correctly projects) but majority of us will not launch comical investigations to find perpetrators but simply cope in silence.
Nevertheless, while the film could have been faster and less exaggerated this does not say anything about the quality of actors. Both Lynskey and Wood are both depressing and funny as they should be, and Wood is in few instances hilarious. But, watch the movie and make your own decision. I can’t say that watching this movie was a waste of time.
Thank you for reading.