A team working in terrorism following 9/11 are on high alert and waiting for something to happen in LA. Everything takes a strange turn when one of them becomes more involved than expected when her daughter is found murdered next to the mosque they have been surveilling. The story is told in two different ways, the present day and 13 years earlier when the awful crime was committed. Ray is our main character and wannabe hero as he has spent the thirteen years searching for the man that killed Carolyn yet had a free pass to get away with it. He comes back into the team he left as he believes he has found him.
The biggest problem with the story is that with it being split it takes a while for pieces to fit together, which wouldn’t be a bad thing if we were then left with a lot of unanswered questions. It felt as though parts of the film had been edited out and therefore left big holes in the story.
Jessica Cobb must deal with the death of her teenage daughter who was also like her best friend. This is something which is interesting in terms of how she vows to do anything to get revenge for her daughters death. Especially when they know for certain who the man in question was, Marzin.
It also raises the question about some people being untouchable when it comes to crime if they are helping the police. Marzin it turned out was the informant into an investigation of possible terror acts, therefore was protected by the DA even with an admission of rape and murder. At that point I got pretty angry with the film in all honesty.
It does try to shock and has a few different twists one of which I did actually see coming, then for it not to be as it seemed. Obviously I’m not going to spoil the ending and twists. Another downside has to be the trailer giving away the key points in the plot, I think it would have made more shocking moments if we didn’t already know about the murder.
Slightly biased view but Julia Roberts really puts in a powerful performance it is just a shame she did not have a bigger role, as the middle part of the film lacked her presence. Chiwetel Ejofor did his best to really hold the film together as Ray and put in a good performance. Nicole Kidman was very underused as Claire and I think we needed to know a lot more about her and if anything actually happened with Ray as that seemed to have some massive plot holes.
I found myself enjoying parts of the film but as I mentioned earlier the big plot holes were too much, if certain things had been clearer it would have been a much better film overall. Especially with the truly talented cast they put together!
