Davis struggles to come to terms with the sudden death of his wife in a car crash. His letters to a vending machine company catch the attention of the customer service rep and a very strange and unlikely friendship is started!
I have been struggling to think of what to write and maybe more how to write a review on this film as it is certainly a difficult one to sum up. From the trailers it does not go in the direction that I ever expected in all honesty. Davis begins to pay more attention to things going on around him as Julia always told him he did not pay attention.
The film is a look at how grief and loss can effect people in very different ways. This must be a very extreme view as Davis begins to well destroy and demolish everything that is around him, and losing focus with the job he once lived for. Working for his father in law Phil who did not really like him to begin with.
Karen is the very mysterious woman who is the customer service rep for the vending machine company and cannot stop ringing or even following Davis around after being touched by his heartfelt letters. This is how they begin a rather strange friendship, as she has a fondness for drugs and no longer communicates well with her teenage son Chris.
Chris has a lot of issues and certainly does not know how to well deal with himself, but Davis manages to help him with some things going on in his life and they form an unlikely bond.
My biggest problem with the film was that some of the parts really didn’t not fit in together very well at all. The sub plots didn’t seem to have a massive impact on the overall story of Davis and how his life changed. Which took a little bit away from how he was dealing with the death and struggling to realize if he did really love his wife or not.
Those parts I found fascinating and wondered the different ways you could possibly deal with grief and when you find out things that you did not already know. An end scene was rather shocking and I did not see it coming at all! But everything with that links back to the not paying attention. So if this film manages to make people think about their own lives and paying attention to more things I think that is certainly a bonus.
I still cannot really think of the best way to describe the strange part of the film, but something just feels really odd at times. Especially when he starts wanting to take everything apart and then growing to just destroying it! I mean obviously it is the title of the film but I thought it was going to have a totally different message in the end.
Not really sure if I would recommend this or not in all honesty. Jake Gyllenhaal puts in his standard of a high performance and keeps it going, but in recent times I am less and less impressed with Naomi Watts and that has certainly continued with this film!
