He loses focus between drama and suspense

"Still Water" .. Matt Damon's performance saves the film from chaos

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We are used to seeing Americans saving Americans or the world in Hollywood movies, and there are lists of American heroes who have saved people from fatal situations.

The heroic act requires courage, and this is not limited to the American only, and you will find it in more than one society, but the American has the tools and capabilities to create heroic stories.

In this film, Bill Baker (Matt Damon) wants to save his daughter who is accused of murdering her roommate in Marseille, France.

The film is directed by Tom McCarthy, who deserves to stand in front of him for a long time, because he switches between acting, writing scripts and directing, and despite that he is not a star, because he works in independent films.

McCarthy made several independent films that were highly admired, but his moment came only six years ago, when he snatched the Oscar for Best Picture from Mexican creative Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, in February 2016, everyone was expecting Inarritu to win for the second time in a row, for The Revenant “Returning from the Dead.” But McCarthy came from behind with Spotlight and hijacked the Oscars!

"Spotlight" was a very ordinary movie about a journalistic investigative unit that exposes a church scandal with a history of child molestation.

Still Water, on the other hand, is a thriller in the form of a drama, or vice versa.

Its composition is strange and will not satisfy everyone and we will return to this point later.

The story is excerpted without directly referring to the source of the quote from the case of Amanda Knox, an American student who was accused of killing her British classmate Meredith Kercher in a university dormitory in Italy in 2007 and was acquitted in 2015.

Alison (Abigail Breslin) has pleaded her innocence and writes a letter to her attorney asking her to verify evidence that has, at last, come out to prove her innocence.

But Alison does not want her father to interfere because she does not trust him.

The father here is Matt Damon as an ordinary American from Oklahoma, i.e. from Central America.

He is not educated but enough to eradicate his illiteracy, and he works in an oil field, or heavy work such as contracting, according to the available job.

He wears a short-sleeved shirt and has a falcon tattoo on his forearm.

The words Alison writes are difficult for her father to accept, but the viewer expects him to step in. Otherwise, what is Matt Damon doing here?

Why did McCarthy choose to tell this particular story?

And why did he choose a star to play an ordinary American?

In his statements, he said, "He wants to make a mystery movie that takes place in a coastal city on the Mediterranean."

McCarthy tells his story from Baker's point of view, but invites the viewer to explore the character from the perspective of the other characters, especially single mother Virginia (Camel Cotten), who becomes his girlfriend.

Baker is not a tourist and is not interested in learning French, despite his stay in France for six months or more, not all to save his daughter, and this is one of the oddities of the text of this film.

Baker is not the typical American left-wing press to condemn the election of former President Donald Trump.

Becker prays constantly, is polite, and believes in doing the right thing.

And if his daughter says she's innocent, the right thing for this God-fearing American, who believes in the right to own guns in his country, is to prove her innocence.

This movie could be written by anyone in Hollywood, but McCarthy made the clever decision to assign a portion of the script to France's best scriptwriter Thomas Bidagan and his colleague Noé Debaugy.

The result, as we have said, is a film with a strange composition!

Strange for those who expect to see a traditional American movie of a father who wants to acquit his daughter and pursues the real criminal with his gun in search of justice. This scenario is suitable for a movie starring his compatriot Mark Wahlberg, knowing that Damon and Wahlberg are from the same state.

We have a Spotlight movie on the one hand with a character knocking on doors in search of answers, and this must have been the McCarthy part, and on the other hand a movie that explores the cultural and racial differences between Oklahoma and Marseille.

While searching for the real killer, Baker asks Virginia, "Why can't we enter this area?"

Is it because we are eggs?

She answers him with astonishment: "Of course not, but because we are not from here."

The intended area is inhabited by a Muslim majority of Arabs and Africans.

Another scene in which Virginie's friend, an Arab Baker, asks: "Did I vote for Trump?

He answers, No. I am not allowed to vote because I have a history and went to prison.”

The film is balanced in terms of highlighting Baker as a non-racist character and accepts cooperation with the Arabs of Marseille to prove his daughter's innocence.

And in highlighting white French personalities who refuse to cooperate in the research if they knew that this might cause any Arab to be unjustly imprisoned because of racism, knowing that the killer, according to Alison Arab, is called (Hakim).

The strange structure of the film begins in the middle of it when it completely changes direction from a film about a father who wants to exonerate his daughter to a father who wants to settle in France after making mistakes

The daughter refuses to help him.

Here the viewer forgets the subject of searching for (Hakim) and we begin to integrate into the new relationship emerging between Baker and Virginia and her daughter, after he moves to live with them as a tenant.

Then he happens by chance and sees Baker (Hakim) in a public place and follows him, and we return to the beginning part, and here is the confusing thing in the movie!

What exactly are we watching, drama or suspense?

It is possible to mix the two, but not in this way, as focus is lost and questions abound.

At the end of the movie, something unbelievable happens and fixes another movie completely different from the events of this story.

This is a performance film and there is depth to the story, but McCarthy assigning the writing to three people is the fourth - and we said previously, the more screenwriters there are, the more chaos there will be in the text - and McCarthy can't combine all the parts together, the chaos is close to happening, and some have happened Indeed, one thing that helped hold the film together was the performance of its lead, Damon.

In other words, watch this as a movie in which you explore the dimensions of Baker's character from a father who wants to compensate for the loss of his family to a family head when Virginie and her daughter co-host, and he begins to take care of the girl to make up for his past, and you don't watch it as a thriller, because he loses focus between drama and suspense.

• This movie can be written by anyone in Hollywood, but McCarthy made a smart decision to assign it to the best screenwriter in France.

• What exactly are we watching a drama or suspense?

It is possible to mix the two, but not in this way, as focus is lost and questions abound.

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