Movie Details
Lou(2022)
Director: Anna Foerster
Cast: Allison Janney, Jurnee Smollett, and Logan Marshall-Green
Movie Type: Thriller/Action
Release date: 23 September 2022
IMDB Rating: 6.1/10
Languages: English and French
Duration: 1h 49m
Trailer
Synopsis
Last year’s Nobody was not only a solid piece with superbly filmed battles, but last but not least, it showed us that anyone can become an action hero – even Bob Odenkirk, who you wouldn’t have guessed in a similar role. And as could be expected, other well-known names decided to follow in his footsteps, from whom you would not expect brandishing a banger and hard blows with a fist. This time it was Allison Janney’s turn, who won an Oscar for the drama.The audience knows her mainly from her comedic role in the sitcom Mom. So she too decided to go through honest training and become a tough girl who can kick you in the balls and cut you with a can. Unfortunately, you cannot build a good film on this fact alone.
The Oscar-winning actress plays the titular Lou here, a mysterious recluse living in the 80s in the absolute middle of nowhere, who only gets out with her dog and others prefer not to talk to her much. One carefully planned day, however, a woman with a terrifying past decides to shoot herself. But just before she pulls the trigger, her terrified neighbor Hannah knocks on her door, whose child has been kidnapped by her dangerous husband. Lou therefore decides to postpone suicide for a while and together with Hannah goes to the woods in the middle of the storm to look for the child.
And at first, it doesn’t seem completely in vain. The film tries to portray itself as a dirty and rough chase in the forest, where rather than action, it relies on the fact that all the characters reach to the bottom of their capabilities, and every fall or kilometer walked in a soaked forest hurts them properly. Thanks to the camera and the rain-soaked backdrops, the nearly realistic atmosphere is managed quite solidly. And that’s also thanks to Allison Janney, who doesn’t cause the slightest trouble as a silent tough girl, she has charisma and you can trust her for more action passages, even if we only get to see one battle here. In a duel with action veteran Daniel Bernhardt, the creators do not make her an extra strong heroine whose fist will bring you to your knees but rather sell her ferocity and talent to hurt by any means possible. And she steps on it without any problems, although it is clear that her opponent has to tame himself a little during the battle.
But there isn’t much action here, and the rest of the footage is taken up by searching the forest and building relationships between the characters. But these passages not only become more and more boring over time and the dialogues don’t really work here, but mainly the film falls down in about half, in which it gets duller and more tedious with every minute. And that’s especially true after the wishy-washy twist, which is clear to 90% of the audience after a maximum of half an hour, and after which the characters start to behave like slowly crawling idiots, who, despite their constant limping, just don’t get anything. The attempt at a dirty and intense atmosphere falls apart, and the viewer is presented with a drawn-out boredom, which at the very end degenerates almost into an unwanted parody.
Play the trailer-So Allison Janney can try as hard as she can, but she just can’t pull off this screenwriting stunt herself. Especially when Jurnee Smollett takes on another bland role and Wish’s Logan Marshall-Green aka Tom Hardy looks more like a hurt puppy than a dangerous bigot. The director Anna Foerster had a nice idea, but even she couldn’t pull the film together under the screenplay ballast. So, instead of a promising thriller at first, Lou became another typical Netflix routine, which after a promising start burns all bridges and because of the accumulation of all kinds of stupidity, no one will remember it in a few weeks.
Watch For Free On Filmy4Wap