The Secrets We Keep
The Secrets We Keep
Starring Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, Chris Messina, Amy Seimetz
Directed by Yuval Adler
Starring Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, Chris Messina, Amy Seimetz
Directed by Yuval Adler
The revenge torture-porn subgenre is rather formulaic and simple: the wronged party finds those who wronged them, doesn't rely on the police for justice, kidnaps them and tortures them in their basement until their revenge bloodlust is satisfied. "The Secrets We Keep" follows that formula like a novice cook follows a recipe - every beat passes by in perfect order, leaving nothing in the ways of shock or amazement, just dullness.
Maja (Noomi Rapace) is a Hungarian (or maybe Romanian, I honestly can't remember even though she mentioned it several times) immigrant who moved to America after marrying Lewis (Chris Messina) fifteen years after they met during World War II. Now a loving suburban mother and wife, all seems well for her, until she sees a mysterious man wandering the streets that seems to trigger something in her. She follows the man to his home and learns that he's going to be walking to work the next day, so she waits in her car and when he leaves she tricks him into thinking she has car trouble and hits him over the head with a hammer and stuffs him in her trunk.
She takes the man home where she tells her husband that the man had raped her and her sister during the war and is a Nazi, and must pay for his crimes - events she never told Lewis before. The man calls himself Thomas (Joel Kinnaman), and claims he was born in Sweden and never seen war, but Maja strongly believes his name is Karl and he was one of the German soldiers who did the atrocities she claims as she suffers nightly with nightmares of the event. As the days pass and Thomas never relents, Lewis begins to think that maybe Maja got her facts wrong, and she could be condemning an innocent man to death.
Quite simply put, "The Secrets We Keep" is incredibly dull, lifeless, boring, and lacking anything resembling something even the least bit exciting. It's filled with plot holes (such as how Maja managed to not just knock Thomas out - in broad daylight in the middle of the road - but also get the much taller and heavier man in the trunk of her car all by herself) and the dialogue is stinted and repetitive, and even though it's repeated ad nausea, I don't really remember much of it - and I just finished watching it twenty minutes ago.
The actors are all of strong pedigree, but all of them literally phone in their performances. Noomi Rapace reverted to her Lisbeth Salander "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" days but even that performance is watered down to repetitive threats and crazed looks. Joel Kinnaman I believe literally slept-walked through his performance as his dialogue was so similar I wouldn't be surprised if he had fallen asleep on set and just repeated the lines he memorized. Chris Messina was resorted to the doting, likable husband who wonders if his wife is actually nuts, while trying to unravel this simplistic mystery on his own. All three are better than this, and you can tell none of them had a real passion for it.
There's not a lot to say about "The Secrets We Keep" - it's a lifeless, soulless film that follows every similar beat that others of the genre has done, supplying nothing more than a time-waster for the actors and the viewers involved.
The Score: D
Maja (Noomi Rapace) is a Hungarian (or maybe Romanian, I honestly can't remember even though she mentioned it several times) immigrant who moved to America after marrying Lewis (Chris Messina) fifteen years after they met during World War II. Now a loving suburban mother and wife, all seems well for her, until she sees a mysterious man wandering the streets that seems to trigger something in her. She follows the man to his home and learns that he's going to be walking to work the next day, so she waits in her car and when he leaves she tricks him into thinking she has car trouble and hits him over the head with a hammer and stuffs him in her trunk.
She takes the man home where she tells her husband that the man had raped her and her sister during the war and is a Nazi, and must pay for his crimes - events she never told Lewis before. The man calls himself Thomas (Joel Kinnaman), and claims he was born in Sweden and never seen war, but Maja strongly believes his name is Karl and he was one of the German soldiers who did the atrocities she claims as she suffers nightly with nightmares of the event. As the days pass and Thomas never relents, Lewis begins to think that maybe Maja got her facts wrong, and she could be condemning an innocent man to death.
Quite simply put, "The Secrets We Keep" is incredibly dull, lifeless, boring, and lacking anything resembling something even the least bit exciting. It's filled with plot holes (such as how Maja managed to not just knock Thomas out - in broad daylight in the middle of the road - but also get the much taller and heavier man in the trunk of her car all by herself) and the dialogue is stinted and repetitive, and even though it's repeated ad nausea, I don't really remember much of it - and I just finished watching it twenty minutes ago.
The actors are all of strong pedigree, but all of them literally phone in their performances. Noomi Rapace reverted to her Lisbeth Salander "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" days but even that performance is watered down to repetitive threats and crazed looks. Joel Kinnaman I believe literally slept-walked through his performance as his dialogue was so similar I wouldn't be surprised if he had fallen asleep on set and just repeated the lines he memorized. Chris Messina was resorted to the doting, likable husband who wonders if his wife is actually nuts, while trying to unravel this simplistic mystery on his own. All three are better than this, and you can tell none of them had a real passion for it.
There's not a lot to say about "The Secrets We Keep" - it's a lifeless, soulless film that follows every similar beat that others of the genre has done, supplying nothing more than a time-waster for the actors and the viewers involved.
The Score: D
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