Friday 31 July 2015

Victoria

Okay, so I saw this mainly because it had a gimmick. This is Victoria.

The set up is a group of guys meet a young woman at a bar. At least, that's what I take from the listing, because I got the start time wrong and turned up 15 minutes late. However, I knew from that listing that it had a slow start so I didn't mind (grrr). We get to see the guys pal around, and one of them make a connection with Victoria, and when the guys need to go to a "thing", one of them is sick, and Victoria is pulled in to fill in. Only, guess what, it's rather shady, and... actually, Victoria turns to the criminal side rather quickly. But then events unravel because these guys are idiots and we see things fall apart.

The main gimmick of the movie is that we are following Victoria for the entire length of the film, which is over two hours. And we start around 4.30am... and continue in real time... and in one shot. Which when you consider they need to roam over various locations in Berlin (which fortunately aren't that far apart), is quite impressive. And they managed to keep the streets clear aside from their actors (being early morning probably helped). And even managed gun fire. (Which were probably soundless shots with effects added afterwards.) In a sense this was like a play in which the actors had to be on form for the entire time (although much of the dialogue was improve), but still.

The plot... was largely mediocre. Some editing would have helped pace, but then the gimmick would have failed. And aside from that gimmick, there isn't much else to really recommend this movie.

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