MOVIE REVIEW: 'Right at Your Door'


Movie review in the Friday, Aug. 24 Oregonian….


 

"Right at Your Door" starts out so very well. In Los Angeles, an unemployed musician (Rory Cochrane) sees his white-collar-professional wife (Mary McCormack) off to work. Minutes later, a series of dirty bombs bearing a mysterious "molecular toxin" go off across L.A.

Writer-director Chris Gorak (an accomplished art director who worked on "Fight Club" and "Minority Report") does a lot with very little here -- using Cochrane's terror, radio reports and the briefest glances at ash-clouds and emergency vehicles to create a real sense of panic while keeping the worst destruction completely off-camera.

But then -- as soon as Cochrane seals himself into his house and we're forced to settle in with a handful of survivors -- the movie slowly but surely loses its hard-earned claustrophobia.

The dialogue devolves into endless f-bombs and actorly exhales. The characters devolve into boring narcissists. And the movie devolves into a broad-brush dark satire of emergency bureaucracy that feels a lot sillier than the post-9/11 panic attack of the first half-hour.
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C; 96 minutes; rated R for pervasive language and some disturbing violent content.

'Right at Your Door' (The Oregonian, Aug. 24, 2007)

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Posted: Fri - August 24, 2007 at 10:50 PM        

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