Lively, entertaining reviews of, and essays on, old and newer films and everything relating to them, written by professional author William Schoell.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

THE LOFT

The male leads -- or pigs -- of The Loft
THE LOFT (2014). Director: Erik Van Looy.

Vincent (Karl Urban of Star Trek Into Darkness) gives keys to a luxury condo to his married male friends so they can all have a place where they can screw around without their wives knowing. Unfortunately, one day a woman's dead body is discovered in the bed. It isn't long before the five men realize that one of them must be the killer. But is it Vince, Chris (James Marsden), Luke (Wentworth Miller), chubby Marty (Eric Stonestreet), or Chris' messed-up brother, Philip (Matthias Schoenaerts)? You probably won't care because the unsympathetic male characters are pigs. Understandably the female characters have little to do in the movie (except play dead) but Rhona Mitra and Kali Rocha, among others, still manage to make a minor impression. Of the guys, Miller and Marsden [X-Men] come off the best. The Loft holds the attention and has some suspense, but the script is tricky and ultimately not that compelling, although it does have some interesting moments. NOTE: This is a remake of a Belgian version that was also directed by Van Looy and starred Schoenaerts (who does a convincing American accent in this) six years earlier.

Verdict: Pigs be damned! **1/2.

2 comments:

angelman66 said...

Will have to check this out, I LOVE Karl Urban...The plot sounds suspiciously similar to the film Very Bad Things with Jeremy Piven, about a bachelor party gone awry.

William said...

I've heard of that one and they do seem to have similar plots. Urban is an effective lead in this.