The Good Neighbor

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Just watched this. A clever and increasingly sinister plot ruined because a significant amount of the content was spoken in Latvian - especially the closing dialogue!! We tried turning subtitles on but the subtitles were not that informative (might have been our broadcaster) - e.g "Woman speaking Latvian". If you can understand Latvian and like crime dramas with twists, you'll probably like this. If you don't understand Latvian, you will miss out on some important (I assume!!) dialogue!!

Nobody seems to have mentioned that most of the film is in Latvian, with no English subtitles I had no idea what the hell was going on! Too slow, storyline is booooring, not helped by the language barrier. Stopped watching after 20 minutes as so bad.

Predictable and VERY slow at some points, although the story is handled well --but it isn't a new storyline. The jury is out on this one, but I wasn't thrilled by it -- it not good and not bad, I guess. I don't think I'll watch it ever again though and super glad I did not pay for it directly. Rhys was okay, but his character --well, seems he's just playing himself, lol. Oh, and fix the subtitles - spent five minutes during a seemingly pivotal scene fiddling with our remote and settings thinking it was just our tech.

Stephan Rick's thriller starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Luke Kleintank dips heavily during the middle and doesn't ever recover. It has an intriguing Latvian setting and a somewhat contrived premise, but what keeps you initially interested is how the lead characters react to the situation(s) they find themselves in. We only get a generic sketch of who they are, what they do, and what comprises their immediate past. The script doesn't bother to give you more details, neither do the performances carry enough heft to make you care. Between the two, Meyers comes up with a much better show since Kleintank's essentially a "tree trunk" during the entirety of the film. As an ardent thriller-enjoyer, I'd say this one bites the dust pretty quickly.

This one of those movies that starts out with the question what any of us would have in the same situation as the protagonist. What if you did something bad and you could get away with it? Has been done before. But the performances are really strong. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is great in his mix of subtle and all out moments. Luke Kleintank does a good job, being relatable while at the same time going down a slippery slope. The film has a retro feel in its premise, and also the pacing is not superfast, but the tension rises constantly to a surprising climax.

As stated in my title, the movie kept my attention and felt like a pre-2020 movie, albeit of middling quality (which is more than I can say about most 2020+ movies). That said, it suffered from poor writing. We're supposed to care about the poor shlub that, while driving drunk and not paying attention to the road, mowed down the girl and left her for dead. Sorry, learning later that she was still alive and his "friend" concealed that from him (more on that in a moment) doesn't change any of that. To add to the unlikeability of the main character, if he thought he had killed (and left) her, he should have the least bit of decorum to not go out on a date with her sister, let alone have her fall in love with him. Was that ever going to end in a happy ending? In fact, he (and she) seemed to have moved past the girl/sister's death quite quickly, with the two of them going on fun dates like a sushi dinner and then kayaking, with the two of them giggling (I think the dead girl's body was just a few days cold by this point). OK, so he's a jerk/dope that we shouldn't root for to end up not being incarcerated by the end of the movie, but let's talk about one of the bigger twists at the end that I predicted early on. Recap of events: The dope met a girl at the club, she gave him her number, he immediately called her from his cell so she'd have his, then he gets drunker, drives, and mows her down (unintentionally, but recklessly). It's understandable that he doesn't remember at that moment (while in a state of shock and drunkenness) that he had called her, so he doesn't take her phone with him (which might not have mattered, as the police could have gotten call logs from the girls cell company), but he *should* have remembered that the next day and figured it would add some complications to trying to cover up his crime. So he should have stopped using his phone, ditched it, and then when he reported the car stolen, he should have mentioned that his phone was in the car that was stolen. Of course, none of that mattered much, because the twisted neighbor friend ends up confessing to the sister (before he hits her, but doesn't quite kill her, with an oar) that the dead girl/sister was still alive, basically setting things up for the sister and doofus to reunite and live happily ever after in the sequel. Oh that's right, I was supposed to talk about the stupidity of the dead girl surviving the hit-and-run. So drunken doofus mowed her down, and there was nothing to indicate that the evil neighbor/friend had caused this to happen in any way. And, in fact, evil neighbor/friend tried to resuscitate her while drunken doofus looked on. But she showed no signs of life, and they left. So we're supposed to believe that evil neighbor/friend *intentionally* brought her back to life, but *only* enough life that she would still die that night?

How can a film with large chunks of Latvian dialect in have no English subtitles?!! It's absolutely absurd. A couple of sentences here and there that aren't relevant to the story I could understand but this film has several long conversations that leave you sitting there wondering what on earth is going on. Add that to the slow pace and the odd abrupt ending and you get a film that you'd sooner not have wasted your time on. Unless you understand Latvian and enjoy a long drawn out, predictable, thriller that doesn't have a satisfying conclusion, I'd avoid this one.