Don McKay

I went to see "Don McKay" with some friends last night; it wasn't really on my movie radar because there hasn't been a big ad campaign, but it was thoroughly entertaining! I didn't really know what to expect; it appeared to be a thriller and although I would categorize it as that, I was surprised at how funny it was. Seriously, the whole audience seemed to be caught up in the plot - the pace and the twists and turns leave you a little breathless at times, but belly-laughing as well. I'm actually considering seeing it again since it's one of those movies that you might want to re-watch and "look for clues." Thomas Haden Church is perfect as Don the lonely janitor leading a solitary mundane life, pining for his lost love. He has an expressive face that is compelling as he is in turns beguiled, curious, confused, frustrated, and desperate. Elisabeth Shue as Sunny is a complete wackadoo, I don't know how else to put it… she is manipulative to the extreme and it's entertaining to see her in action, turning on the charm and wrapping Don around her finger. She takes full advantage of Don's vulnerability; it seems at times Don is vaguely aware of being played, but is enjoying the attention of this sexy creature so much that he willingly goes along for the ride. Melissa Leo appears as Sunny's uptight and prim caregiver. If you've seen her in other films, just the sight gag of her character is amusing enough, but I daresay that she delivers some of the best lines in the film. There are several character actors whom I recognized as "that guy! I love him - he was so great in…" who fill out the cast. They may not be household names, but you've seen them countless times before. I especially liked Keith David as Otis but they all delivered solid performances. I don't want to give too much of the plot away, but suffice it to say that there is a lot of double-crossing going on. Although the viewer may be wondering what the hell is going on in the middle, everything becomes clear by the final act.

source: Don McKay

And this is what I like about this actor. I have yet to see him in a role where he isn't playing a profoundly disturbed person. Usually a victim of his own brand of craziness, desperation and poverty, this time he's not only victimized by himself, but by a whole crew of people that want to do him extreme harm. This time the style is very Hitchcockian, very plottish and devious. Haden this time is clean shaven and so we are better able to see the off facial twitches and mannerisms that hair usually masks. There's a very strong cast here, and I remained kind of reluctantly glued to it like a bug on some sticky trap. I found it the weakest of the Haden Canon of eccentric roles, but still unmistakably the signature style of an actor I like a lot. Emmet Walsh is among my favorite character actors but he doesn't do as much as I wish he would here, but then this role is confining and Liz Shue is Liz Shue, for better or worse. Haden is still a huge victim, this time it seems that the entire universe is conspiring against him, instead of just his own somewhat ambiguous past mistakes. And that complicates matter for this thoroughbred of personal misery. He is at his disturbed best with simpler plots where he is so effective at portraying abandoned, broken hearted, impossibly lonely and isolated black holes of misery and trouble. That is all still here, but diffused by confusion. Usually he ends up with some sort of emotional resolution while remaining in hideous circumstances but this time there is so much going on that the resolution is very shaky and temporary because it's circumstantially based, not a result of some agonized internal struggle that results in a personal epiphany, his trademark. All in all, if you your assessment of what he's cast for coincides with mine, then this is worth the time. We seem meant to take a lot of preposterous idiocy seriously, or is it that we are supposed to take comedically some very serious stuff. Clearly, BOTH. And so, again, the tone can be as confusing as the twisting plot, the Hitchcock "Who done It", I mean REALLY done it? Sort of thing that's goin' on. Decide for yourself. Watchable, but with provisos.

Like many movies I see from Netflix, I never heard of this one until browsing for my queue. I have seen little of Thomas Haden Church since "Sideways", and Elizabeth Shue has been in many major and minor films, and I like thrillers usually, so I took a chance. The first third of the movie built slowly, and had a feeling of mystery and suspense and strange things going on. When Church first returns to his home town and sees Sunny, who is supposed to be dying of cancer, I immediately chuckled at how healthy she looked, figuring the director preferred to have an attractive lead over reality. As the film progressed, some scary moments occurred, as well as some darkly humorous ones, and for a while, I felt I was watching a terrific film. But like many movies in this genre, the promise of a logical explanation is sacrificed for either a convoluted complicated ending or a simple nonsensical one. This had more of the former than the latter, but it all happened so close to the end that it seemed more like a comedy than a thriller. Maybe that's what the director wanted, but it made the movie seem cheap and contrived. It reminded me of a better film "The Faculty", where one ending after another was piled on at the end in a "can you top this" fashion. Still, the movie held my attention, and I didn't fast forward, and though I felt a bit let down at the end, I still enjoyed it enough to give it a 7. I tend to be easy on grading movies, saving grades of 4 or less for boring films like "The English Patient" which was like watching grass grow, only slower. I had a smile on my face through much of Don McKay, along with a feeling of suspense. Worth a look.

Thomas Haden Church stars as the soft-spoken and slow-moving (but not necessarily slow-witted) titular character in this surprisingly entertaining black comedy. Why do I say surprising? Oh, because it faded quickly into oblivion and has such a low score here at IMDb. And I admit that I at first had trouble getting into the film's weird (and I don't think always intentionally so) rhythm. Like a lot of black comedies, it takes time to establish its tone and cue you in on what you should and shouldn't be finding funny. Unfortunately, Church isn't up to the task of being our confident guide. His attempts to play Don McKay, a janitor who's summoned back to his hometown by a dying ex-girlfriend, as a shuffling and seemingly dim bulb come across instead as stiff and baffled. But the film is saved by playful performances by Elisabeth Shue, as this sordid crime film's femme fatale, and especially Melissa Leo, as a suspicious nurse who channels Judith Anderson from Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca." It's up to these two, who are clearly having a ball with their roles, to get the film and us firmly into the black comedy spirit, and once they do so, the film plays as a quirky and entertaining bit of fun. Grade: B

"Don McKay" is marketed as an edgy thriller, that's probably because they had no idea how to categorize it. The movie begins as a cross between a romantic drama, a character study, and a dark thriller. Don McKay, played brilliantly by Thomas Haden Church, returns to his hometown by a letter from his high school girlfriend, Sunny (Elisabeth Shue). That's the romantic drama aspect. But we quickly learn that there's something not quite right about Sunny, there's something not quite right with most people in the town, and McKay has dark secrets to his past. We are always on the lookout for creepy turns and shadows around every corner. Those are the dark thriller aspects. It seems as if it's going to be a character study, but its really not about McKay himself. It's ultimately plot-driven and the mysterious problems that McKay gets himself into. I was riveted throughout. I actually highly recommend "Don McKay" because it's cleverly written to throw its audience off-guard, it's completely original, and these film-makers know what they are doing. And no matter what genre you decide it is by the end, it won't be what you thought it was at the beginning.

Unfortunately, this movie has fallen into the hand of very incapable play-writer. (Yet, at the end of the movie, Don's reply to the detective's comment of "You're crazy" : "No, I'm just lonely") does move me profoundly and make me remember this movie for the rest of my life!) The movie has good main actors and actresses, sadly they fall into the hand of a lousy director. Some of the scenes even make you feel they are performing in a comedy-film. The camera-shooting and film-editing is poor enough to be graded "C". However, this is one of the very very few bad movies that could attract me to keep on watching up to the end. Its plot is excellent in aspect of suspense and romance. And you know that the actors and actresses (they by themselves are excellent) in this movie could be spotted much more brilliant if given a better director. May be it is the reason why this movie's popularity has shot up drastically ( Up 1,303% in popularity this week according to IMDb's Moviemeter). The release of this movie has rid the opportunity for other more capable movie-makers to produce a much better version: most people, having known the plot and story, would not watch a suspense / thriller movie a second time.

Well, I started watching this movie in high hopes, reading previous reviews. And, at first, I thought this is going to be great movie. But as the time passed away, I started to doubt. Everything was great to the half of the movie, and then all disappeared. Some of the scenes were too unconvincing. I simply got the feeling that something was missing there. There were some laughs, but for me, they didn't belong in this movie. I mean, if they are trying to make a suspenseful thriller, then make a thriller, don't try to make it funny by adding unnecessary jokes from time to time. This just ruins the atmosphere. And the revealing of truth at the end... I got the feeling that the actors were trying to explain the truth to me, not to Don (he had his arms in his pockets all the time, looking unconcerned). Acting was good, but only if you analyze it separated from the movie. Otherwise you will see that the actors were overreacting sometimes, and sometimes didn't put themselves into the movie enough. M. Emmet Walsh did a good job as a taxi driver (very convincing). Others were OK from time to time. Music is also the problem. Sometimes well chosen, but not always. The credits song, for example, makes you wander, what have you watched - romantic comedy or thriller. I think that the biggest problem of this movie is that the makers tried to make this movie as a thriller with elements of comedy. I also think that it had great potential, but just need polishing.

Despite how weird and confusing Don Mckay, aka Moment of Truth, is, it ends up being a pretty nifty mystery. A high school janitor goes back to his hometown to be reunited with his teenage sweetheart, only to get caught up in a complicated web of extortion involving an ex-husband, an inheritance, a mysterious disease and a murder. This is a VERY BIZARRE film, a mystery during which every other minute you say, what the heck is going on, until the ending wraps it all up. It features a very strange lead character as well, who is kind of grotesque and slow witted like Sling Blade. This is a very original movie. Have some patience and sit through it and you won't be disappointed.

I thought the movie "Don McKay" was something entirely different than it actually was. Maybe because I had just briefly glanced over the description on the back, so I had formed a wrong impression. Well, this movie was somewhat of a rather slow, painful process to get through. The start of the movie was promising, introducing the character in a nice way and slowly building up to something promising. And as the viewer you knew something was amiss. Then the movie suddenly started to get confusing. I am sure the makers of the movie thought their story was a good and exciting one, but the end product turned out as a confusing mess. Throughout the movie, you sit there and gawk at the half-hearted acting performances and the dull dialogues. You never really buy into believing in what is portrayed on the screen, as the whole picture just doesn't work together in any way. However, I have to say one thing, Thomas Haden Church did a wonderful performance of portraying the gray and boring character of Don McKay. I thought he worked quite well in this role. The characters in the movie were well enough fleshed out. Very nice and screwed up characters, that had potential, but failed to shine through because of the acting was below mediocre. The one good thing about the movie, was when Don revealed the ultimate truth towards the ending. Now that was a nice surprising twist to an otherwise confusing and halting story. I liked that part, it worked quite well. The rest of the movie, well not so much. I had thought this to be somewhat more of a thriller, but ended up with a lukewarm story that took forever to be told. Definitely not a movie I recommend that you pick up, unless you are bored, fanatically fan of any of the actors/actresses, or if you just have nothing better to do. There are lots of other movies out there with far more entertainment value.