Movie Review – Secret in their Eyes

Chiwetelu Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), Julia Roberts, and Nicole Kidman have a combined total of eight Academy Award and ten Golden Globes nominations. Collectively, that’s a lot of talent and a lot of amazing films produced with this lot but unfortunately even the greats are attracted to a pretty bad one now and again, as is the case with Secret in Their Eyes.
I thought the trailer for this film looked pretty bad from the get go but I gave it a chance and I was sorely disappointed but not shocked. Roberts plays Jess, an FBI agent whose daughter has just been brutally slain. Her partner Ray (Ejiofor) is bent on helping her catch the killer. All of this you can gather from the movie trailer but what it won’t tell you is that time sequence of flashbacks between 2002 and 2015 is extremely messy and can be difficult to follow. Kidman plays Claire the assistant district attorney and unnecessary kind of sort of love interest of Ray. I say unnecessary because it just felt like an add-on to an already somewhat messy script.
They so badly wanted this to be a thriller with revealing plot details at every corner but instead of that punch to the gut feeling you get when you figure something out that is monumental to the progression of the story as with most thrillers, it felt like a tap on the shoulder. Even the non resounding end of the story made no sense. I wish I had something about this film that truly wowed me, but I was sorely disappointed with the lack of not only practicality but by the length of the film itself.
What makes talented actors such as these three, become drawn to projects such as this? A film that is just eh, neither the worst nor the best. A watered down plot that plays out like many Law and Order: SVU episodes. I truly don’t know the answer but I really hope the cast never does it again.