Louder Than Bombs

(spoiler free)

It’s a rare occasion when a film appears on cinema websites that hasn’t been ruined by months of promotion and trailers. So I found it very refreshing to see ‘Louder Than Bombs’ appear this week as I knew absolutely nothing about it. What more the poster didn’t even seem to reveal anything about the film. I had a read at the two sentence synopsis and decided to give it a go.

The film focuses on a family and the aftermath of an accident that has affected them all. The cast for the film is quite small and not made up of huge names. The actor that would be most well known would be Jesse Eisenberg fresh from playing Lex Luthor in what turned out to be a rather divisive performance. Eisenberg often plays fairly oddball characters in films and he maybe runs the risk of being typecast at times, however I’m a big fan of his work and his involvement here was no different. His character is quite a regular one and as a result it was nice to see Eisenberg play a character without strange quirks or eccentric personalities but one who was more your average kind of guy. This meant that Eisenberg could really get stuck into the character’s drama and he was great at this. The rest of the cast were impressive too though. Playing Eisenberg’s on screen brother was Devin Druid, a new comer to film however this wasn’t evident. Druid was fantastic and carried a lot of the emotional weight to the film, his role was pivotal and he made sure it worked. Alongside these two actors were Gabriel Byrne, Amy Ryan and Isabelle Huppert. All of these performers played their characters very well and helped to set and keep the tone of the film consistent throughout.

The narrative is fairly contained in itself and I could forgive people for thinking that it could easily become boring, I know I certainly thought this could be the case. In reality though the vast amount of different perspectives within the story meant that the narrative never became boring. Due to this I found the drama to be very engaging and strangely calming too. This was achieved through a variety of different story telling techniques employed throughout the film which helped to bring life to a story that could easily have ended up being fairly dull. The script was brilliant too allowing for a couple of moments of humour in between the gripping drama, the script helped the characters to be so watchable and even though the audience won’t always agree with their choices they’ll still feel for them. The script certainly helped to bring that strength of different perspectives to the forefront and the way in which these scenes were edited together helped create impact too.

So whilst you may never have heard of ‘Louder Than Bombs’ you should definitely check it out, I’m certainly glad that I did. The film will immerse you in it’s drama from start to finish and it doesn’t opt for cliched threads of narrative. The script is there to be enjoyed and there is so much to be taken from this, it’s this element that really helps to bind the film together and give it momentum moving forward. This won’t be for everyone but as many people who would be a part of the audience that will appreciate it should see this movie.

Rating – 8.5/10

Question: What is your favourite Jesse Eisenberg performance?
(Leave your answers in the comments below!)

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