Review: Sweet Virginia


Set in a small Alaskan town, motel owner (and former rodeo champ) Jon Bernthal strikes up a kind of friendship with a mysterious, brooding out-of-towner (Christopher Abbott) who is bad news. Rosemarie DeWitt plays a widow, as does Imogen Poots.



One of those films that takes forever to go nowhere and has a pretty familiar plot to boot, this 2017 thriller/drama is pretty much a waste of time. Director Jamie M. Dagg (his most significant film to date) adopts an enervated approach that never keeps you interested, but it’s not like he’s being helped much by screenwriters Benjamin and Paul China (similarly relatively new to cinema). “In Cold Blood” this ain’t, despite a typical ‘violent trouble headed towards sleepy town’ plot trajectory. I also feel this was far from Christopher Abbott’s best work, he’s completely flat. Jon Bernthal is pretty good, but the lovely Rosemarie DeWitt is wasted and seems half-asleep throughout. The whole film is similarly muted and low-key to the point of being in a near-comatose state. Where the hell is the tension? More importantly, after it’s over you wonder ‘What the fuck was the point of all of that?’. Nothing, really. Nothing.



An idea rarely done right in cinema, this sleepy, uninteresting film certainly doesn’t get it right. Jon Bernthal is fine, the film is much ado about nothing, certainly nothing new. If it wasn’t going to be original, it at least needed a filmmaker with a sense of urgency.



Rating: D+

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