Thumper (2017)

Surprised to see so many good actors participating in this halfway thought through film. Writing is bad, directing pretentious, felt like a film school student film. Gave it 6 as a kudos for being able to involve good actors into this bad film.

There were some aspects of this film that I thought were really interesting and showed glimpses of brilliance but in the end they were often unexplored. The character development itself was my biggest complaint. The main character's family struggle really just doesn't feel invested enough. The thin line between law and criminality, again, glimpses are shown but don't really emphasize but more lightly tread. The law enforcement pressure on their own, and later the circumstances surrounding the characters who are involved in crime was almost frustrating to watch because you are given a tease of how that could have been a major breakthrough, but to no avail.I will say that the setting, characters, and a few individual performances really kept me interested. The guy who played Wyatt ("pornstache") was sort of another level, and he really sold the performance. The main character seemed awkward in the beginning but that (to my surprise) is resolved later on.Overall I'd put this at around 6.5, nothing groundbreaking but some people with a niche for this subject will enjoy it.

While the lead actor, Eliza Taylor, and others do well at building the chemistry between each other, this is only half of the film; the half that takes on the seamy underbelly of the Street drug dealing world seems contrived and the film suffers from a poorly written script, made-for-t.v. acting, and direction that seems scattered and poorly put together. Yes, it might have been a great film, but the focus of what the director presents seems tired and condescending to the viewer. That is, some of the film feels like it wants to build down-to-earth, close relationships between characters who seem sincere. The drug sub-culture parts of the plot displays a lack of understanding of the drug sub-culture and lingo. While this might have been finessed by employing less talk and more affect, the director fails to dovetail the human aspect with the moral one, makes it difficult to identify fully with any one of the characters. The subject matter ends up a drawn-out garbled message that was the main underplot of the entire project; the battle between separating good and evil from the grey emotional places in-between.This may have been better accomplished with less dialogue. Dialogue that sound more like a t.v. crime show rather than the decent indie-style film that it spends more time with. The half half that resembles a television series totally decimated what the character building phase accomplished. There is no happy medium. One comes away from the film feeling like hostages on a very slow, predictable amusement park ride - too long, too boring, and not worth the viewer's effort. Wish the entire crew the best, and hope that next time the director focuses more on overall continuity than wandering around taking us on an obvious message that spends too much time pretending the script is adequate, rather than spending time editing.The initial idea was probably well-intentioned, but this subject matter, once bitten into, seems more than the professionals who made this can effectively chew. Overall very unsatisfying. Four stars only for efforts actor Eliza Taylor, who provided brief moments if engaging and captivating realism.

I kind of like gritty movies about the drug underworld. This one was just OK. All the elements were there but the movie didn't really do much for me.My main problem is I didn't like any of the characters. Even the protagonist. They all made such dumb decisions. And even the scenes of the protagonist's home life which felt like they were supposed to earn her sympathy ended up just being sad.Not a bad movie by any means. But certainty not a great one. I suspect younger audience might like this more than those over 30. For me the movie was hard to connect with. In a month or so I'll probably forget this movie completely and that is it's worst sin- being unmemorable.