made his second feature film,
and it “makes a lot of noise
for a movie that doesn’t have
much to say,” said Will Leitch in
NewRepublic.com. Amy Adams
plays a rich gallery owner who
loses herself in a manuscript,
written by her novelist exhusband,
that relates a violent
tale of rape and revenge. Three
stories soon intertwine: the dissolution of the couple’s
marriage years earlier, the empty life that Adams’
character leads now, and the Texas-based story in the
novel. The results are “never dull” and “never not
gorgeous,” but the film’s attempt to merge pulp with
art commentary never comes
off. Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal
“do some real acting here,” said
Stephanie Zacharek in Time
.com. Gyllenhaal plays both the
ex and the protagonist of the
novel, a man whose wife and
daughter are assaulted by three
strangers in a nighttime highway
sequence that proves “the best in
the film—tense and beautifully
sustained.” But too much of the movie feels “glazed
and remote,” as if it weren’t even made by a human.
It’s ultimately “a coffee-table book of a nightmare,”
said Ty Burr in The Boston Globe. Though “easy to
admire,” it’s also “easy to close the cover on.”