# Movie Review - 'Demolition' (Feedback Sought!)



## Ibb (May 6, 2016)

Hey everyone. I decided I want to begin writing movie reviews. This is a whole new gig for me--I'm not sure I know what I'm doing. Below is the very first review I've written and I'm hoping for feedback. What works? What doesn't? I'm appreciative of all feedback. The movie reviewed is 'Demolition,' starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Below is a link to the movie trailer if you need a cue-in on what just the heck that is. Here we go!
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MOVIE TRAILER: *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a80Hmk7vGSQ

*MOVIE REVIEW: *
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*If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen a glimpse of the scene: Jake Gyllenhaal, accompanied by precocious newcomer Judah Lewis (playing the parts of ‘DavisMitchell’ and ‘Chris Moreno,’ respectively), stands before a wall of tools within a hardware supply store, twirling a sledgehammer about in his hands, a hint of a smile on his lips.“What are we doing?” the young Lewis asks. “Taking apart my marriage,” says Gyllenhaal, just before the scene cuts ahead, Gyllenhal already full-swing as he drives the sledgehammer down onto the surface of a marble kitchen island. The surface crumbles, the marble shatters, and multitudinous chunks are followed by an agile camera as they spill and sprawl across an immaculate greystone floor. Cue the trailer music. Onwards unto enticement. But let’s wait a moment and remain inside that hardware store. 
 
In-film, Chris’ curiosity persists beyond knowing just _what_ Davis is up to―as precocious as the actor who portrays him, the inquisitive accomplice wants to know just _why _his friend has suddenly decided to destroy every last square inch of his home. For a moment, Gyllenhaal’s Davis is without words; how best to answer the question, not only as it pertains to Chris’ curiosity but, the audience realizes, to the narrative vehicle driving the movie’s theme? After a moment’s contemplation―and a deft, well-timed heft of the sledgehammer by Gyllenhaal―Davis responds: “Sometimes… don’t you just wanna… _break_ shit?” 

Maybe that should have been in the trailer. _Demolition _hasn’t so much stumped critics as it has defied their ability to pin it down. Is this a movie about love or grief? About a man who is numbed by shock or numb at his very core? Is it about breaking shit apart, or about putting said shit back together? It may be all of these things and it may be none of them. There has been more than one interpretation and less than a few ‘style-over-substance’ dismissals. And Jake Gyllenhaal’s presence in the wake of his newfound penchant for portraying enigmatic and perpetually elusive characters (see _Nightcrawler, Enemy, Prisoners_) only complicates the issue further. But to give the movie its proper due the surface must first be delineated. What, exactly, is the story that ‘Demolition’ tells?

Here’s the setup: during what appears to be an ordinary morning commute, Davis Mitchell and his wife, Julia, are blindsided by an oncoming vehicle. The screen cuts to black as the couple are engulfed in a screeching of metal and glass, preceded only by Davis’ screaming before his voice―along with everything else―is silenced. The title appears across the screen, and soon thereafter, returned to the living world, we find ourselves in the waiting room of a hospital. Davis’ father-in-law startles him awake; Julia is dead. 

What follows isn’t grief, but a distinct awareness of its absence. Unable to mourn her, Davis soons admits that he never truly knew his wife, able to recall only a smattering of characteristics which, when put together, fail to congeal into the portrait of a recognizable human being. To unravel his apathy and make sense of the life he now recognizes to have never known, Davis deliberately sets forth in the dismantlement of myriad objects, beginning with computer monitors and bathroom stalls until eventually reaching the feverpitch of bulldozing his own home. 

That’s the gist of it. If you were to break down the multiple scenarios, subplots, and side-tales that furnish _Demolition’s_ hour and forty minutes, you’d be he hard pressed not to stumble towards the realm of the novel, and in this way the movie has probably been unfairly regarded. Davis is never revealed in whole despite the movie’s assured sense of momentum towards epiphany, and when _Demolition’s_ conclusive act is reached, the curtain-fall feels more obligatory than organic. This could be argued as an intentional style owing to literary sensibilities; more likely it’s the result of a script that feels written in the moment, compelled onwards by its own sense of inertia without having a clear goal as to how its myriad disparate elements will eventually culminate. In this way _Demolition_ concludes insubstantially, purporting to deal in themes of bereavement and loss but ultimately finding more revelry in the small (and destructive) moments that its script seems to barrel towards, in lieu of having a clearly charted plan. 

The relationships Davis forms are not written convincingly but are rendered effective by the confidence of an astoundingly talented cast. The havoc he wreaks on items large and small elicit little to no consequence, and by the end seemed dropped and forgotten about entirely. That ending, which seems to demand a musical ascension representative of redemption as Davis sprints down the docks towards what we’re told is denouement, is at stark odds with everything preceding it, and feels like a hastily tied bow of an ending. Those ‘style-over-substance’ complaints? They’re warranted. But they do a disservice in foregoing mention of the individual components which make _Demolition_ a joy to behold.

If the script feels concocted in the moment, then it should have the strength of exuberance―and it does. _Demolition_ feels like a form of catharsis, the product of a writer riling himself back to life through the act of composition, purging himself of something vile and giving it form through Davis. The confessional letters our hero writes and of which _Demolition_ makes narrative use (voice-overs to the audience which serve both as exposition and directing vehicle) might as well be the author’s own, if not detailing the failings of his own marriage through fabrication then at the least confessing something in the ways of having become frightfully aware his existence within a depthless and unfulfilled life. _Demolition_ is the fervent, feverish response to this cognizance. “Everything has become a metaphor,” Davis blithely states―and it is clearly not Davis who is talking. 

This has all the makings of a spectacular failing. Based on its commercial and critical reception, _Demolition_ seems to have gone that way. But if art’s value is to be determined solely on the _purpose _of its creation, then what room is left for the appreciation of mere aesthetic, wherein a perception of the human soul, bristling behind the veil of fiction, seeking through pen, instrument or brush some means of expression, can be recognized―and enjoyed―as is? _Demolition_ is the result of this human impulse, and what should be regarded is not the narrative whole by whose standards it falls short, but the rapid, feverish, admirable brushstrokes by which it is born. It is a movie as unclear of itself as its hero is unclear of his own life. But there is beauty in uncertainty, and in the striving towards what may ultimately be an unattainable coherence. _Demolition_ is an embodiment of both.
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Sometimes, don’t you just wanna break shit?_

Sometimes, it turns out, you do―the impulse is the justification.


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## Aquilo (May 30, 2016)

This is an excellent review. It needs a little tidy-up on grammar, but for a movie review -- excellent!


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