Undertow (2004)
Average Rating: 5.9/10
Reviews Counted: 117
Fresh: 64 | Rotten: 53
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.2/10
Critic Reviews: 37
Fresh: 22 | Rotten: 15
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 7,128
My Rating
Movie Info
Chris (Jamie Bell of Billy Elliot) is a volatile teen who lives with his father, John (Dermot Mulroney), and his little brother, Tim (Devon Alan). After the death of Chris' mother, his reclusive father moved the family to a shack in backwoods Georgia, where they raise hogs. Tim has an unusual eating disorder. He is constantly making himself sick by eating things like dirt and paint. One day, John's estranged brother, Deel (Josh Lucas), gets out of prison and shows up on the farm. John is less
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Cast
-
Jamie Bell
Chris -
Josh Lucas
Deel -
Devon Alan
Tim -
Dermot Mulroney
John -
-
Pat Healy
Grant the Mechanic -
Bill McKinney
Grandfather
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All Critics (119) | Top Critics (37) | Fresh (65) | Rotten (54) | DVD (11)
A deep-fried piece of Southern Gothic that wears its unpleasantness like a merit badge...
Top CriticGreen's signature pastoral tangents and codeine pacing don't slow down this tale of two boys fleeing their psychotic uncle so much as inappropriately slacken any of the story's suspenseful aspects.
Green's characters often find themselves in raw, unprotected moments, but Undertow also can feel a little too mesmerized by its own junkyard visions.
The film's first half is hypnotically watchable.
Green is all surface and no depth in his effort to channel the late novelist William Faulkner.
A crackling good, low-down noir thriller.
a drag-down bore
Undertow is a wonderful murder mystery about the price of greed, and the way money can easily tear apart relationships that were once thought solid.
While it has lulls and sleepy moments, Undertow also full of startling truths and beauties, as well as offering a window into a side of the country that movies rarely bother to look at.
The actors grapple manfully with the ersatz rural poetry of the dialogue, but Green's pacing is slow and self-indulgent, and the action often departs from recognizable human behavior.
Green's most accessible film to date, yet he keeps his directorial style very close to the way it's always been. Slow, patient, revelatory.
Structured like a fairytale and driven like a fast boat down a leafy river, Undertow expertly blends myth and suspense to create a fable with a wicked sense of humor and an appetite for destruction.
A poetic, atmospheric drama that's worth seeing despite Green's struggle to blend character drama with more conventional thrills.
It will likely polarize his critics further, causing some to recoil at his welcoming of influences, and others to be thankful for more "Malick-lite."
A front-loaded film, sure, but what a front.
Bell is superb as Chris and he completely nails the difficult Southern accent; if you hadn't seen Billy Elliot, you'd swear he was someone Green had picked off the street
While the first hour promises something very special indeed, the build-up is squandered once the two brothers take flight with not enough sense of danger or urgency to hold your attention.
An oddball character drama in the tradition of the southern gothic novel that gives way to predictable action and suspense in the tradition of stalker films.
Bad in the worst way, yet it trails clouds of glory and authentic stink from a Georgia pigsty. Pretty, a legitimate auteurist statement. And a flop.
Audience Reviews for Undertow
The first few minutes seemed interesting and it had it's moments, including a small appearance by Shiri Appleby, but I just found it did not hold my attention particularly well.
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- Undertow (2004) (DE)
- Undertow (2004) (CA)
Green has often interesting visual stamp in his films. He is clearly fond of placing his stories into the backwoods of America. His films like Gerorge Washington, All the Real Girls and now Undertow, share the samkind of milieu. But where George Washington felt plotless, Undertow is might be too ambitious for it's own good.
First 45-minutes of Undertow are pure magic. It is the more intimate moments between the father and his two sons living in a old house at Georgia, that are this film's true strenght. However the screenplay co-written by Green himself takes a fatal turn when father's psychotic brother comes to visit them and to collect an old treasure which their own father once left them. From there the film begins to collapse and loses most of it's hypnotic edge when the story shift gears and turns into kind of variation of Grimm's fairytale and begins resemble something more closer of an horror-film. When it reaches it's weak climax the whole film has come so far from where it took off that it feel like we're watching a whole different film.
Somewhere under it's sloppy screenplay lies a great film, but now it is buried with too many sideplots, ideas and themes. Undertow remains still a interesting film because of the thick mood it has. Here is film that does have atmosphere like no other film has.
Undertow works best as a curiosity. For those who has not seen any Green's work, this is a good film to begin with. It is far from perfect but in it's strange hypnotic way it is also a must see for those who are interested in seeing uncompromising films. Undertow is flawed rarity.