Uncertainty (2009)

The writing directing pair of Mcgehee and Siegel outing titled "uncertainty" is a mixed bag. Coupling two possible outcomes from the toss of a coin we are witnesses to two separate story lines about choices and outcomes. This premise in itself is interesting, however the delivery of the story is not.We never truly get to find out anything about either character except longing glances and pitted silences which could fall in no small part to the improvised script. This I believe is the greatest failing of the film apart from the cinematography and bland direction.The blackmail storyline is littered with plot holes and "scream at the TV moments: why did you do that?" The scenario of trying to blackmail a murderer after they witness this fact implausible at best and at its worst poor writing.Both leads do their best but at times the improvised scenario sees them lacking a direction and it shows clearly on screen. What could have been interesting turns bland and boring by the hour mark as all tension which was built up at the beginning fizzles away along with the viewers interest.This could be down to the directors "uncertainty" about where they intended to go with both stories which is a fitting and ironic name for the movie. In the final scene we are left with a coda from the main character bobby after they throw the mobile phone onto a floating rubbish dump something along the lines of we will keep plugging away. The tragedy is the fact that we had to wait an hour and forty minutes to find this gem out which totally negates the entire film before it and viewing it pointless.

It isn't easy to admit that only a movie's charm has won you over, but that seems the case here. I got lost along the way, but derived some much pleasure from the many qualities of this film that I'm certain I'll want to see it again It deserves the attention because perhaps it was my length of tooth (a film devotee for almost eight decades) that got me offtrack. Anyway, the parallel story lines (if that's what they indeed are) threw me a curve-ball. So offtrack did I get that I was adamantly wanting to know why the hell Joseph Gordon-Leavitt and his yellow tee were so inseparable. Suffice it to say that this day in the lives of Gordon-Leavitt and his charismatic and talented girlfriend here, Lynn Collins, is worth spending with them. The simple but interwoven plots have the young and in love couple spending idyllic time with her family for part of the day, and finding more adventure than they bargained for in downtown Manhattan, where our hero finds a cellphone at the scene of a fatal shooting that unwinds before the couple's and our eyes. That they find a stray dog, take it in, and care for it, suggests warmly that we're sharing time with good people. The cellphone, it turns out, belongs to a shady character who will pay a king's ransom to get it back. Therein lies the key to a coin flip on the Brooklyn Bridge. Not one to always need endings ironed out neatly, I was more than satisfied to see these two young, likable people agree to adjust to what lie before them, A hardly minor occurrence, too, on this day, is that she announces her pregnancy. As a couple, this pair is magical. Finding out they ad-libbed dialogue was intriguing here. Unlike others who commented negatively, I thought their input natural and articulate. I'll take the blame for my confusion out of the director's hands. That he merits, for having gotten so much so entertainingly on the mark.

Time-travel. Of all the various things that cinema has to offer, its play on temporal motifs by using the illusion of real-time action and changing it via editing to disestablish real-time movement from continuitous, straightforward action is one of the greatest gifts it brings art. What we have here is a relatively simple concept that nevertheless gets rare play in cinema, a sort of quantum possibilities narrative that usually requires a device (Primer) but only rarely is done just for the dramatic effect (Sliding Doors). A couple meets on the Brooklyn Bridge (Gordon-Levitt and Lynn Collins, playing characters named Kate and Bobby, counterrespectively) on the 4th of July. They cannot decide whether to go to a barbecue chez Kate's family, or spend the evening tout le doux. So they break off, running in two different directions, and live entirely different lives over the next 24 hours. Green-clad couple Kate and Bobby meet up in a car and go to the barbecue. Yellow-clad K&B grab a taximeter cab and are on their way downtown. Green are going to find that their dinner is met with family politics, secrets revealed, uncomfortable situations, and melodrama. Yellow are going to find themselves immersed in a lottery conspiracy that will threaten their very lives. The two stories are cross-cut together and developments in the one affect the understanding of motivations and choices in the other, while those things that speckle daily lives such as cellphones, computers, and trains stand as rough bridging points between the two stories.Very fun, as well as I'm wondering if Siegel and McGehee read themselves some Mark Z. Danielewsky before or while writing this script (the yellow and green flip-side of character development preexists in Danielewsky's Only Revolutions, a book where the same story is told from two different perspectives of a couple, and, like this movie, contains a revolving narrative that brings the characters back to the starting point). The careful attention to maintaining the color coding of the story lines (including splashes of yellow at times when things in the green story get threatening, or splashes of green at times when the yellow story gets safer), is pulled off really well. From there, however, the narrative is a little unbalanced, though in some ways that allow me to appreciate the risk the filmmakers are taking.See, we are in fact having to relate emotionally to the subtle dramatic narrative arc of one story while simultaneously engaging in the pulse-pounding suspense of the other. That means for the larger part of the movie, I and I feel many other audiences get impatient with the more subtle, delicate moments in the family because they're so eager to see what will happen next in the race for their lives. Ultimately this unbalance is fractured further by the end, where the endings of both arcs reveal the ultimate difference between such modes of storytelling, as the open ending serves the dramatic side very well in terms of conflict resolution, but the open ending of the thriller side just makes it feel like the filmmakers had to end it for lack of a better idea. Which, unfortunately, may have been the case. The meeting of polarities at the end with the characters coming to the same conclusion feels more forced than it should.This is unfortunate considering that the whole movie (called "Uncertainty", after all) is about the difficulty of making choices. So when it feels like the filmmakers themselves had a difficult time choosing how to end their movie, it sort of breaks apart the whole point of the movie in the first place. However, this is also a situation in which I do not believe I would have come up with a better ending myself. The methods in which the two stories inform each other is too important to risk losing by having the characters end up in vastly different places. The ultimate decision the characters have to make as regards their relationship still HAS TO be made in both narrative arcs, so we can't as well have the characters end up the worst or the better for having made an otherwise insignificant decision as regards their day. If this movie struggles, it mostly has to do with the fact that it contains such strongly contrasting and hard to cut between genres as the romantic drama versus the suspense thriller.Nevertheless, the most exciting and fun thing about watching the movie is watching how the characters, incapable of being definitive and strong when surrounded by the pressures of family, are completely forced to make minute-by-minute decisions that they are required to commit to while running through the streets trying not to get killed.So yes, this movie is not perfect. But as Gordon-Levitt says, "If the story is good, I'm in. It's that simple." This movie is pretty awesome when taken on its own merit.--PolarisDiB

The 2nd best of the four movies I rented last week. The best, by far, was The Green Zone. Uncertainty needed a final act to make it one of the most excitingly fresh low budget films of the year. We never got the final act. We got what we expected 20 minutes into the movie. I'm not going to divulge much of the plot, but let's just say that, had this film thrown together a big finale', we might have one of 2010's ten best.The chemistry between the two leads is quite excellent, and the dual narratives are both interesting and well acted.Uncertainty laid out the foundation for a fantastic story, but failed to develop the story down the stretch run. Just about every characteristic of the movie is above average - so I can marginally recommend this movie to film buffs and friends alike, but much like ' A Scanner Darkly' and 'Midnight Meat Train', Uncertainty seemed a bit uncertain(pun intended) on how to finish itself. It's missing the ingenious plot twist/storyline that could have really pushed it over the top, making us certain that it was a fantastic work. A couple of possibilities crossed my mind on how this could have been done.As it stands, this is above average, but won't be garnering a cult following, or any academy awards.64/100