Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Enjoyed/entertained. Perhaps setting is Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Sissy Spacek is immediately familiar, but I couldn't place/recognize the gifted 1960s composer-musician Kris Kristofferson until reading over the cast. I watched film twice as I was multi-tasking the first time. Film did not bore. I like the action, including the violence, the local folks-extras are realistic, and the plot is not predictable. It is an exciting ending. The sheriff made his pretty daughter a deputy, yet a truer male chauvinist than should be allowed. The villain/bad guy is a killer. He does have a clever if not somewhat charismatic personality, but really portrays a slime-ball.

A couple being driven in a limo lose control of the car and end up flipping over several times somewhere on a snow-covered road. No Hollywood explosion though this time around. The driver is killed and the cabin is now filled with money. A cop arrives, the guys kills him. They collect the money and and decide to split, as people in movies invariably do. They're out nowhere in a snowstorm. They want to cross to Canada and somehow reunite.The girl stops a car down the road. We've met the guy in the car before. He's a convict ex-boxer who just got released. He went to his gym to ask his trainer for money. He took all his winnings. A scuffle ensues and the trainer is apparently killed when his head hits a cabinet. So the guy is on the run. He agrees to take her to the next gas station. She flirts. When they arrive, they are told that the roads are closed due to the storm. So they stay at the bar talking. She seduces him although all she wants is a ride to Canada. He falls for her.Meanwhile, the other guy Addison who turns out to be the girl' s brother ends up at a cabin and kills the family man there who is abusive to his wife and stepchildren. There he gets some calls from the girl about where they could meet. When the police arrives he kills some of them but makes it to the house and terrorizes the older couple that owns it. Then the girl and the boxer arrive, he's the son of the couple. What follows is one of those bizarre scenes where the villain bullies everyone to say what they are thankful for and eat cake. Then the police arrive.Deadfall is a very watchable movie with a strong cast. Olivia Wilde steals every scene she's in and there are some tender and hot moments when she's with the boxer as when she basically tells him that she'll be any character he wants her to be. The love between the siblings is also unusual for a movie that focuses on the ugliness of life. Of course these two have to make a whole lots of dumb choices to get into the predicament the script requires. And there are just dozens of those only-in-the-movies coincidences.Aside from those issue the biggest problem is Deadfall's despicable message. The cast and crew try to make us believe this is a movie about de-idealizing the notion of the family. It's not. It's about demonizing fathers, a project the establishment media have long pursued. Almost all the males we meet are fathers and treat their spouses and children like crap. No male is spared. Addison who did rescue his sister from...you guessed it...the abusive father also treats her like a child and slaps her around when he wants to.The cast and crew do a pretty good job here but I just cannot forgive the evil and mean-spirited portrayal of men.

"What would home look like? I don't know. A farmhouse in the valley, I guess, like the one we grew up in, Liza and I."Academy Award winning director for his foreign film The Counterfeiters, Stefan Ruzowitzky, now brings us an American crime thriller dealing with dysfunctional families. It seems to be an odd choice for a director who had so much success back in Austria considering this is an average B-film that doesn't introduce anything new or unique to the genre. Deadfall never manages to deliver the thrills that it promises either and has a rather unsatisfying ending. At times it felt like a film that was trying to be something else, but it never quite figured out what it wanted to be and ended up only scratching the surface of the dysfunctional family drama it was so desperately tying to explore. Perhaps it suffered from trying to add several subplots and intertwine them together towards the climactic end, but ultimately Deadfall felt like your average crime thriller with a strong ensemble cast, but a poor and unimaginative script. Deadfall never quite delivers the thrills and the characters are underdeveloped turning this film into a messy ordeal. As much as I wanted to enjoy this, I couldn't find anything redeeming about it, and not even the beautiful Olivia Wilde shines here. It's a dull film that tries to be more important than it really is with way too many subplots and overlapping themes that are barely explored.The screenplay was written by Zach Dean centering on two siblings, Addison (Eric Bana) and Liza (Olivia Wilde), who are heading towards the Canadian border after having pulled of a casino heist. We never see the actual heist take place since the film opens with them already in route to the border when all of a sudden in the midst of a blizzard their vehicle crashes into a deer. Addison is forced to kill the patrolman and decides to split up with Liza and meet up later as the police will be after him. On another note, we are introduced to a former boxer named Jay (Charlie Hunnam) who is being released from prison. The first thing Jay does is call his mother June (Sissy Spacek) who lives in a farmhouse near the spot where Addison and Liza crashed. She invites Jay over for Thanksgiving dinner despite the fact that he's been estranged with his father Chet (Kris Kristofferson). Along the way, Jay finds Liza nearly freezing to death near the highway and he decides to give her a lift. Addison on the other hand is being hunted by Sheriff Becker (Treat Williams) and his men who are closing in on the trail of blood he's left behind. Becker's daughter, Hannah (Kate Mara), whose also an officer is ordered to stay in the station and out of trouble. As the characters are all introduced it becomes inevitable to realize that they are all going to intersect somewhere along the way.Despite the talented ensemble cast, the script is so poorly written that there is not much they can do to prevent their characters from becoming cardboard cutouts. Even the always reliable and legendary actors such as Kris Kristofferson and Sissy Spacek can't do anything to save this film. Hunnam and Wilde have a very poorly developed romantic subplot that felt extremely rushed. Bana didn't really look too menacing as the villain and at times his character felt cartoonish. The dysfunctional family elements that this film tries to explore never really gets anywhere and they all seem too cliché. The male characters are seen as tough while the females are forgiving and patient. The western showdown near the end wasn't engaging either and everything about this film felt ordinary despite the different themes they were trying to blend together. It never digs under the surface of those elements it's trying to introduce and that's why the film feels so dull and empty. Deadfall is not the important and smart thriller it's trying to be.

A star studded cast, some good snow filled cinematography and an interesting beginning.That were the good points. The rest of Deadfall is a cliché ridden intruder in the house whilst being on the run. Actually Eric Bana playing the man on the run goes to several houses even saving a a wife and children from a cruel father.Bana and Olivia Wilde are siblings who have been involved in a heist and split up when their getaway car gets involved in an accident in the snow. They hope by splitting up it gives them both a better chance to escape and also stops Bana keeping his mitts off his hot sister!Bana shoots a police officer dead who arrives to help and goes on to shoot several others whilst there is a manhunt out for him consisting of some of the stupidest and sexist police officers the USA has.Wilde ends up with an ex-Olympic boxer (Charlie Hunnam) who is heading home for Thanksgiving after being released from prison for throwing a fight in a betting scam. At the Thanksgiving dinner its open house for hostages as Bana just happened to had arrived earlier. There is a vicious showdown which also filled with unintentional laughter.The acting ranges from the banal to OK. Sissy Spacek is not given much to do, Hunnam is a blank. The story is all over the place, Bana is a cold killer but helps out a stranded mother and her children. Yet a bit later on, he stops by to have dinner and holds Spacek hostage when there is manhunt after him.The police are just nauseating with the female deputy having to put up with abuse from fellow officers, one of them being her dad (Treat Williams). There is harsh violence but the film lacks thrills, characterisation and entertainment. If a film does not even work as brain dead entertainment, its in trouble.