Demolition Review

The movie starts out with Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his wife driving along a road discussing his need to fix the fridge as he seems distant as of recent. They then get into a car accident which takes her life and Davis just continues his life as though nothing happened at all despite the sorrows of those around him. It's actually somewhat psychotic to an extent for him to feel nothing at all, but he just attempts to go about his usual day to day.

This gets negative reactions from those around him and he decides to just experience life as he's started to notice many things that he had forgotten along the way. This is originally done in a constructive matter as he takes things a part to understand how they work and quickly evolved into him destroying everything. Along his travels he meets Karen (Naomi Watts) which has been stocking him to an extent after reading a series of complaint letters he had been using to vent against a vending machine company.

The two strike up a friendship as he's just crazy basically with her also being an odd individual. This fades weirdly and then he connects with her kid that has a series of issues, once they together more things get destroyed than before. It's an alright premise for the film, but it just seems to meander around over staying its welcome and never truly getting to the point efficiently.

The performances were great with Gyllenhaal being fantastic as usual though the overall plot didn't really ever seem to go anywhere. I understood what they were trying to get at throughout the movie and the point could have been pushed a bit more as it was just there towards the end.

It didn't particularly need to expand out so far as I'm assuming people would have gotten the point better if it wasn't so long. I liked the cinematography in this one as the shots were nice and mostly warming with the characters always doing wacky things which were neat.

I also suppose every actor needs their jam out to music with headphones like they don't care montage and Hyllenhaal got to do just that in this movie. The younger actor Judah Lewis which played the daughter Davis was somewhat looking after also did a great job in their performance so I thought that should also be noted.

The Conclusion

Demolition wasn't a terrible movie though I just felt that the plot got stretched out too far and that diluted the film's purpose. The acting was great and there were some well done moments, but it got boring after awhile through the extension of unnecessary fluff that was thrown into the mix.

It's honestly sort of a weird movie as it didn't hit the whole feel good thing and the main character was somewhat crazy I'd say just in how he reacted along with what he was seeing around him.

Demolition Review at Theater with Standard Viewing
Screening Provided by VVS Films

Rating Overall: 4.5