Rudderless is a film worth your time especially if music films are your jam. William H Macy directs and co-wrote this and does a solid job in the first department, but the plotting rather than the writing is overwrought here.
This is a film that by its end cannot decide what redemption should mean, and settles for several easy options as it won't struggle really, really hard with its premise. There are clearly two films here and the join in the film is as wonky as a bad edit cut - this deliberate attempt to thought-provoke the viewer is misjudged - it makes for a film that refuses to gel and what could have been a singularly wonderful film about music as hope, is turned into something else. This is not the film as promised by the end and it makes me wonder why they chose this particular path.
Again, the performances and music are terrific, and it even gets something of what being in a band is really like. However, the plotting is strangely off-balanced and makes a very enjoyable, likable film into something else entirely, and rather than making the film deeper it pulled this viewer straight off the screen like a cold shower and because of this it fails to provoke the thought that the makers hope it might. It needed a far more rigorous process to handle the third act and it never gets there.
I would still recommend this one for its music and the redemption offered in the first 48 minutes, but once the twist is revealed it is a hard film to believe, or believe in.
This is a film that by its end cannot decide what redemption should mean, and settles for several easy options as it won't struggle really, really hard with its premise. There are clearly two films here and the join in the film is as wonky as a bad edit cut - this deliberate attempt to thought-provoke the viewer is misjudged - it makes for a film that refuses to gel and what could have been a singularly wonderful film about music as hope, is turned into something else. This is not the film as promised by the end and it makes me wonder why they chose this particular path.
Again, the performances and music are terrific, and it even gets something of what being in a band is really like. However, the plotting is strangely off-balanced and makes a very enjoyable, likable film into something else entirely, and rather than making the film deeper it pulled this viewer straight off the screen like a cold shower and because of this it fails to provoke the thought that the makers hope it might. It needed a far more rigorous process to handle the third act and it never gets there.
I would still recommend this one for its music and the redemption offered in the first 48 minutes, but once the twist is revealed it is a hard film to believe, or believe in.