Last Moment Of Clarity, Junk Dressed Up As Suspense

Last Moment Of Clarity(BookMyShow)

Starring Samara Weaving, Carly Chaikin, Zach Avery, and Brian Cox.

Directed  by  James Krusel,Colin  Krisel

Rating: * ½

I didn’t  like the  look of  this  film from the outset. The trailer looked  phony and  put-on,as if the characters  were  in it between  other more valuable work because of the zeroes  on the cheque.

I am sorry,  but no amount of money—and I don’t see much of that in this discernibly  low-budget  project—should persuade actors to do  a film as improbably-plotted as this.The best known  actor in this film after  Brian Cox(who spends  his  time playing the hero’s sugar daddy) is Samara Weaving who plays a mysterious woman who is presumed killed by our hero Sam played  by Zach Avery  (arrested  earlier this   year for  a multi-million  investment  fraud).

 Sam   spends his  time in near-empty  theatres watching  movies which look  more interesting than what we have here. During one such outing he  comes across an actress on screen  named Lauren who looks  exactly like his “dead” girlfriend.

So far  so  good. Here is where the plot thickens, sickens and shrivels up. Sam  now  follows  the  actress  to  her  new film’s premiere, where very conveniently, he  runs into an old  college friend Kat(Carly Chaikin) who, even  more conveniently,  has harboured  a secret  crush on Sam , who helps  him from that  point  onwards with  guns, contacts, meals, comfort  kisses, cuddles, etc  etc.

I am not very sure why Kat is being  so generous  with Sam,or why  they stalk  the  actress together  from premiere to  party to  hotel. I am not  even  sure why  we are sitting watching this ridiculous  misfire about a  man who loses  his girlfriend to the Russian  mafia and then rescues  her from their clutches  by barging into the  mafia boss’ hospital room and threatening him.Mafia Boss  immediately calls  his  boys back.

It all looks  like  someone’s idea  of a suspenseful gangster  drama gone  completely  awry.

While  the  performances are  possibly passable(can’t tell for sure  because everyone looks  preoccupied , with the plot or something else, can’t tell) no  actors involved with the  plot.

 When the  story  moves to Paris there is  some visual relief for us. But budgets  being  what they are these days,  the narrative quickly scampers indoors  for a  lights-out fright-climax where   the aforementioned Russian mafia  comes to get poor Georgia/Lauren.

The climactic shootout is mostly in the dark  where  you can’t make  out who is  who. But that’s okay.You really don’t  want to know.This film’s script suffers from an acute case of  malnourishment. It has  the locations and actors. But it doesn’t really know what  to do with them.  They are  led through a  shallow maze  of  identity  crises,  in the hope that the characters will find themselves and  their way out of the mess.

No such  miracle happens. I kept  waiting for that promised  moment of  clarity which would have explained why BookMyShow invested in this  losing  proposition.A death  wish , perhaps? There are better ways of  killing  yourself.   Don’t  waste  your time killing yourself with boredom  with this one.