A man hires a corrupt detective to kidnap his wife and her lover in order to teach them not to mess around behind his back. That's the basic premise of Four, a movie that takes place entirely in an abandoned warehouse on the night of the kidnapping, featuring only exchanges between the four characters. It could have been an original premise if there hadn't been a slew of these single room, small cast movies coming out lately, but can Four stand out on its own?
The first thing that I thought, even by looking at the cover, is that Four would be very much like 44 Inch Chest, a Ray Winstone flick from a couple of years back. I found that to be a garbled, boring mess though, so Four was actually quite a nice change from that. The performances are solid, with each character switching from calm and collected to full on rage at several points during the movie. The conversations are quite sharp and witty and each actor greatly portrays their anger and frustration at the events unfolding throughout.
So yes, the acting is good, the location is spooky and desolate and nicely matches the plot, but the problem is in fact with the plot itself. There's a constant sense of unease building up through the first half of the movie. It feels like not all is going to go smoothly, as evidenced by the movie's tagline. But when the inevitable twists do start happening they just seem to fall flat and the end of the movie left me feeling that it didn't really go anywhere. I hazarded a guess at a few possible outcomes as I was watching, but the actual result didn't strike a chord with me at all.
Perhaps I'd just built my expectations too high, but while the performances are sound, Four just seems like a bit of a mess of an unfinished movie. Still, it's better than 44 Inch Chest.
My rating: 2/5
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