Domestic Disturbance
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Movie Reviews of Domestic Disturbance
Movie Review: Surprising!
Summary: 4 Stars
I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. The suspence coninued to build the whole time up until the very end. I couldn't believe it was over so soon. It seemed to just start. That was how enthralled I was! I recomend this to everyone!Movie Review: Awesome Movie
Summary: 4 Stars
this movie is awesome choice if you like thrillers this movie is very suspensful indeed. it is a out of your seat thrillerMovie Review: What a weak story line! Too bad for Travolta
Summary: 3 Stars
Harold Becker(Director) tried to embed a taste of suspense into the story. Well, who are to blame? Despite the fact that Travolta scored yet another Razzie nomination for Worst Actor for this film as well as "Swordfish", certainly he is not the one to be blamed. As a matter of fact, since the comeback from his career saving motion picture "PULP FICTION", his performance has been of top quality of all, standing unrivaled in a sense that he can play both a good and bad guy without causing us any awkward feeling at all. But for his performance, this otherwise predicable story wouldn't bear great value. To top it off, many scenes or lines which were originally shown in the theatrical trailer are either missing or being changed or deleted. What happened to two guys fighting in the water or Frank(John Travolta) challeging Rick(Vince Vaughn) revealing his past in front of him? Seems they changed the story line. As skilled as he is, why on earth did Harold Becker make or even agreed about the script. He could have turned this into a real suspenseful story like "Mercury Rising" he also directed. Ironically enough, the theatrical trailer gives much more thriller than the real movie does.
This is always the case when one tries to squeeze such thrilling essences into less than 90 minutes' film. If you take a look at "The Good Son", a suspense drama Elijah Wood and Macaulay Culkin starred in, you will find a bad example of all. One hour and a half is hardly the sufficient amount of time for true depiction of complex situations and for plot development to the point. (Provided the tight budget, it kills the movie.) And If that's the case, I can't blame Harold Becker either. He should've seen it coming, though.
To point out what is worthwhile is the portrait of the strong ties between Frank(Travolta) and Danny(O'Leary). Needless to say Travolta plays well his role as a loving father, Matt O'Leary's performance to play the charactor of an adolescent boy with the sense of uneasiness about the situations of his parents' divorce/remarriage and his struggling also deserve much attention.
The story is about a boy witnessing his step father(Vince) killing a guy. Although nobody except his father(Travolta) believes in his story 'cause of his frequent lies, the bond between Danny(O'Leary) and Frank(Travolta) is strong. Believing in his own son, Frank becomes suspicious about Rick and starts searching for a lead to his killing. Up to here is just all-too-common in this type of story, however, the real value of the film as a suspense stems from here. Either thrilling or boring, that's where you decide.
Movie Review: A thriller that pushes too many of the wrong buttons for me
Summary: 3 Stars
"Domestic Disturbance" is one of those films that belongs to a growing genre of recent Amercian movies in which the main character has to take the law into their own hands because the system cannot or will not provide protection. Young Danny Morrison (Matthew O'Leary) is not happy when his mother (Teri Polo) gets remarried to Rick Barnes (Vince Vaughn). He is even less happy when he sees Rick commit a murder. Danny tells his father, Frank (John Travolta), and they tell the police. With all of the details provided by Danny and all the advantages of 20th century forensics, the police come up with no evidence whatsoever. But Danny has never lied to his father and Frank keeps coming back to that one fact and refuses to let things drop. "Domestic Disturbance" overloads our repulsion at this situation by having Rick repeatedly threaten Danny, so not only do we have to do with the injustice of the cops being incompetent and/or apathetic, but we have a child in danger as well. At least his mother turns out not to be a total idiot, which is a good thing, but then it provides additional irritation during the climatic fight scene (this is not a spoiler: if Frank is going to have to take matters into his own hands this is going to involve physical violence). My problem is that people in movies do not know how to fight. Everybody has something that they want a nickle for every time they seen it in a movie: I want mine for situations in which a person in peril takes a whack at the bad guy and then drops the implement (skillet, bat, artificial leg, etc.) and runs away giving the villain a chance to recover. This is why I literally stood up and applauded while watching "24" this season when Jack made his daughter shoot the guy trying to kill her not once but twice. Get the job done.
Ultimately my complaints are more about the plot than the actors, since Travolta and Vaughn are fine as the heroes and villains. "Domestic Disturbance" is a formula film put together with bits and pieces of things we have seen before and seen done better. The result is not "great" (five stars) or "good" (four stars), but "okay" (three stars).
Oh, and if ever happen to be fighting for your life and you are on top of the person trying to kill you, instead of hitting them in the face with your fist (which is going to hurt you) grab their head by the hair and bang it on concrete. Do not do this once, but keep apply the treatment as necessary, and never, ever, whatever you do, take lessons on how to fight from actors in movies like this one.
Movie Review: "I haven't seen any adult bookstores in this town."
Summary: 3 Stars
Worth seeing just to hear Steve Buscemi deliver that line. (I'm beginning to wonder if Hollywood can exist without the guy. I find it curious that the very few good movies America produces each year seem to have him in them.) *Domestic Disturbance* is about a troublemaking, constantly lying pubescent who finds out that his rich new stepfather (Vince Vaughn) is a murderous con. The kid discovers this when he hides behind the front seat of his stepdad's SUV and witnesses Vince Vaughn kill Steve Buscemi, the latter being an unwelcome reminder of the past that Vaughn's trying to cover up. Understandably, given the kid's various scrapes with the law, the police doesn't deign to believe his story, which creates the prime source of suspense here. The way the discovery gets made is a regrettable B-movie convention, and Buscemi's bloody exit may prompt you to turn off the TV, seeing as how he brought the strongest sparks to the proceedings. But do stick around -- *Domestic Disturbance*, despite what you may have heard, is actually a well-made thriller that isn't afraid to take on some heavy themes. The movie boils the step-parent issue down to its worst-case scenario: it imagines a household in which every kid's worst fears about the yet-to-be-trusted stepdad are realized. Through the whole movie, both young Matt O'Leary and Vaughn are onto each other . . . one threatens exposure to clueless Mom, the cops, et al., causing the other to make a counter-threat of murder. This creates a genuine sense of terror, to say the least. Also noteworthy is the relationship between the boy and his real father, John Travolta. Both instinctively dislike the rich newcomer even before his psychopathy is revealed, a dislike stemming from what's probably a primal fury directed at the ex-wife / mother. Even the commentary about how money talks and everything else walks is a point well-taken. The ending of the movie's a letdown: director Harold Becker feels the necessity of manufacturing a "hair-raising finale" that doesn't pass the reality test . . . but in fairness to Becker, he's more restrained in this area than some others (compare with Robert Zemeckis silly finish for *What Lies Beneath*, for example). Becker's also to be commended for putting a firm clamp down on Travolta's tendency to horse around in front of the camera -- the result is a surprisingly immediate performance.