Buster's Mal Heart

source: Buster's Mal Heart

I watched this movie not knowing what I was getting into at all. I had seen the trailer and I mainly just decided to watch it because I stumbled upon it and seeing Rami Malek as the lead made me excited. First of all I was very intrigued by the cinematography and the minimalistic setup of the otherwise pretty complex plot. I found the balance between the 3 timelines working very well with the flow of the film. I was surprised when I had to pause at one point and realized I was already half through, feeling like I had only just started it! It uses the same kinds of twists as seen before in works like The Matrix, Fight Club and American Psycho and Malek's performance is fairly parallel to what is seen in another of his leads, in Mr Robot. I do, however, think that these parallels work in favor of the movie. It also comes with Biblical parallels which I found very interesting. Where I think it faulted was when it at times became a bit too obvious for me. I would have liked it to be a little more subtle with the Bible references which is mainly what docked it from a perfect score for me.

Meaningless movie. Please don't watch. Waste of 1,5 hours of our life. Malek is good but the script is no good.

Everybody, well almost everybody, needs a job. We need money, food, shelter, some gizmos, maybe get laid once in a while. This movie proves my point. People make movies like this because they need the money, the exposure, the opportunity or just to hang in the industry. Outsiders and newbies have to break in somehow. Other people with money want to give it to people with an idea for a movie. They all come together, work for a while, money gets passed through the industry jobs and bingo! out pops … something. Maybe good, mostly mediocre, occasionally amazingly incoherent and bad. Guess where this movie lands? Yes, thats right. Amazingly bad. But it fulfilled its deeper purpose of keeping the Industry Wheels turning. And people had jobs for a while. So I give it two stars because even crud like this keeps the industry alive.

This film is more than just a film. It is an experience, and it has you from start to finish in its seemingly quiet way. Then it comes to you in your dreams too, in your conversations about it, and your will for others to see it too. The characters, the world, the scenarios, all bring to light a new perspective. I loved the storytelling and it's fresh, funny, and dramatic. I often find that I am not so moved by newer films, that they aren't succeeding in providing me with new insight or actual cinema or unique stories. I have no issue with walking out and never needing to look back. This is a movie I want to see again. And I will find new revelations there. I wish many more films would aspire to this, which succeeds in what it does.

Director Sarah Adina Smith crammed at least 3 films here and she tries to make it work but fails. There was too much going on. If I could pick among the jumbled 3 separate films in there, the best would have been this man's slow but steady descent to paranoia. The Y2K element also felt too shaky a ground to stand on as all these events and twists take place. I was curious to see Rami Malek in a different role and in some ways it was a pleasure, with his character being a dad and the segment with the couple in the cabin being my personal favorites. But his character is supposed to be Mexican (the film's script requiring him to speak a lot of Spanish even) and I hope I don't have to spell out why this is off-putting. I read that he was cast before Mr. Robot so opportunity-wise for Rami I get accepting this role before, however there's been some time to improve on this, and I'm disappointed at Malek but more on Smith for failing to do so. The element of wanting to see Rami Malek in a different film also gets mired by certain plot similarities to his other well-known work.

This is a movie so good it could easily have gone another 45 minutes to an hour of its rather short hour-and-a-half and suffer absolutely no ill effects. It was vignette after vignette of three distinct story lines, two of which may, or may not, be the result of the real story line, which may, or may not, be the real story at all. I'm not going to say much more than that, but this movie will blow you away.

As former Yankee catcher and accidental prophet Yogi Bera once uttered, "when you come to a fork in the road, take it"*. There's a crucial scene in this puzzling maze of a film, that borrows that classic Yogism*, helps explain some of the many parallel plot runs, yet leaves the door wide open for heated discussion. Easy answers be damned. Wide eyed Rami Malek is hotel concierge Jonah, working alone, late nights, cleaning expansive rooms of various shades of brown. It's reminiscent of "The Shining". And like Jack Nicholson before him, Malek's character is quite complicated, with the line between reality and illusion basically a stretchy skipping rope. "Buster's Mal Heart" is an adventurous, ambitious, challenging film, pushing boundaries with an improvisational flare, messing with traditional story structure to dig deep inside the mysterious human condition. Without a brilliant, terrifying, sympathetic and comedic performance from Malek, this film may not have worked at all. He dominates every scene, and is terrific, whether he's playing playing with his precocious daughter, or pooping into a kitchen pot. Swell part about this engrossing, conspiratorial, head scratcher of a flick - apart from the ensuing, post-viewing dissections - is the sheer entertainment value, casting the lure for repeated viewings. Bravo!

Odds are that the majority of the five star reviewers didn't understand the movie, and the one star admitted to not getting it. No he didn't kill his wife and child. Did he even have a wife and child? No he was not stranded in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean - symbolic for? So open-ended, you choose. Did he meet a strange independent free-psychotic person - maybe, maybe not. Most likely not. Did he leave his job to spend his life ransacking cabins in the wilds - possibly, but possibly not. The chase encounter seemed too dreamy to be real and then his disappearance at the the end probably means he didn't exist. So, conclusion choose whatever you want - it's your story to make up.

There are definitely different ways to approach this film. It can be darkly comic, but at its core, it's a tragedy with one actor at the center of it who is ready to give it his all. Malek has become a star due to his TV series, Mr. Robot, and here he gets an opportunity to shine even further. The lead character is a tricky one, balancing different story lines and timelines and personality traits while still having to be consistent in characterization. It's not hard to see why Malek was cast here. He has such a bubbling intensity and forceful acting style that comes across natural while leaving a lasting impression, and that's exactly what he does here.