Temptation turns a man's life upside down in this noir-influenced thriller from Australia. Ray Yale (David Roberts) is a construction worker who is married to Martha (Lucy Bell) and is helping to build an upscale resort hotel just outside Sydney. Ray isn't entirely happy in his marriage, and his roving eye has become focused on Carla (Claire van der Boom), a hairdresser who lives next door. Carla is married to a low-level mobster, Greg (Anthony Hayes), but she craves excitement and is soon
having a torrid affair with Ray. Carla knows that Greg has a large bundle of cash hidden in their home, and she hatches a scheme she shares with Ray -- they steal they money, set fire to the house, and run off together, with Greg imagining the cash was lost in the blaze. While Ray isn't interested in a life of crime, he can't say no to Carla, but when he develops cold feet at the last minute, his attempts to reach Billy (Joel Edgerton), who was hired to torch the house, are unsuccessful, and things take a turn for the worse when he learns that Greg's aged mother was in the house when it burned to the ground. Ray quickly realizes he's been implicated in a murder, and Billy doesn't hesitate to use this knowledge to his advantage. The Square was the first directorial project for Nash Edgerton, who previously was one of the leading stuntmen in the Aussie film industry. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
A taut, well-executed if somewhat predictable riff on the murderous caper-that-goes-wrong theme that has anchored sexy, blood-stained crime pictures from The Postman Always Rings Twice to Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.
It's as if filmmaking brothers Joel and Nash Edgerton (Joel cowrote, produced and costars, Nash directed) sat down and said, "Let's watch these suckers wreck their lives, and the lives of everyone around them."
If you listen closely throughout this Australian thriller, you might hear the devil chuckling in the background as the characters continually dig themselves into more hopeless predicaments.
The Square gets plenty of early elements in place to promise something more special than it ultimately becomes... Even a strong first impression can't survive such a flailing resolution.
A debut feature that replaces the Coen brothers' humor in similarly labyrinthine comedies of errors with Arthur Penn's grit and Peckinpah's tense string tuning.
Dire, frantic, and unfailingly engaging...introduces a major filmmaking talent to the scene who understands the utter joy that comes with detailing complete psychological devastation.
A tough, twisty tale of murder, adultery and purloined loot that stays true to author James Ellroy's succinct summation of the primary theme of film noir: 'We're all ----ed.'
Slick compared to films noir of old, the stunts too cool and characters too swishy, but swaggering with a good old-fashioned edge and raw steaming action for each and every one of its 105 minutes.
The movie's protagonists (and all of its supporting characters) are reprehensible people, and Roberts' performance is fascinatingly uncharismatic, extinguishing any possibility of sympathy for his character even when the film gradually reveals his town to
While the performances are good, it felt like I had already seen this movie before. Also, if you are looking to root for anyone, you're going to have to look elsewhere.
The Square recalls one of cinema's all-time classic lines, that moment in 1981's Body Heat when Kathleen Turner's femme fatale Matty Walker studies William Hurt's gullible Ned Racine and declares, "You're not too smart, are you? I like that in a man."
Rather than intrigue, the pile-up of confounding issues in The Square merely bores, hindered by pacing that is uniformly slow rather than suspenseful. A better title: The Blob.
What's to be admired is how fearlessly Edgerton embraces the dirt and grime oozing out of "The Square," manufacturing the guilt that's produced when information is withheld, when lies are tossed around, and when the best laid plans go awry.
This is one of the best Australia film's I've ever seen. I am very surprised that some director here in the US has stole the idea, like is done with so many Japanese Films. The title the Square is misleading. it should be called the Tangled Web, or the Rousted Triangle, cause that what you have. Claire van der Boom
plays an excellent part as a young beautiful everyday women in an affair with a older man, wanting to get away from her abusive husband, who ha come up with a large sum of money hidden in his attic, which she finds, and now has the money to run away with her lover, So starts the web / square of involvement of people that all become linked together one way or another. This movie will keep you on the edge. The ending will blow you away, Very realistic. This is a Must see Today film. 4 1/2 stars.
January 6, 2012
Bruce Bruce
Super Reviewer
A very dark crime story without a happy ending. Lots of twists and turns. You get deeper, and deeper, into the movie as the characters lives unravel. Amazing how much can go wrong after one small REALLY bad idea. Great job...
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