There's something uniquely frustrating about this film. Bad movies are a certain kind of disappointment. Good movies that go bad are another. Tell Tale aims at and successfully achieves a complacent mediocrity and then just as it suggests it might become something better, it goes right in the toilet. Being lulled into a resigned acceptance, only to have your hopes raised and then instantly dashed is an aggravating emotional whiplash. I usually wish that movies had been better. I would have preferred this one to be worse, sparing me those few bitter moments of futile hope.
Based loosely, and I mean very loosely, on Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", this motion picture is about Terry Bernard (Josh Lucas). He's a recent heart transplant recipient trying to get his life back in order. He's got a young daughter named Angela (Beatrice Miller) with a terminal genetic disorder and Angela has a beautiful doctor named Liz (Lena Headey) who's also pretty fond of Terry. I'd like to tell you more about these characters but they don't have any distinct personalities. If you smushed all their defining character traits together you still wouldn't have anything resembling a three dimensional human being.
Terry starts having these episodes where he hears his heart thundering in his ears and sees strange images of people milling about in a dark room. These episodes eventually lead to Terry killing people and with the help of a jaded detective (Brian Cox), he learns that his victims are the people who killed the person whose heart now beats in Terry's chest. And that demanding, magical organ isn't gong to let Terry stop killing.
Now, let me give you an example of what I mean by Tell Tale being mediocre. A pretty big deal is made of Angela's genetic disorder, to the point where there's an entire scene built around it. Terry having a sick daughter, though, let alone one with a very rare and heart-breaking condition, never goes anywhere or amounts to anything. It doesn't play any role in the plot. It's not connected to anything else in the story. Angela's disease doesn't mirror Terry's condition or link up with it thematically somehow. You could make Angela healthy and Liz her math tutor without changing anything significant in this film. And that's what I mean by mediocre. Tell Tale isn't bad, there's simply no depth or complexity or sophistication to any of it.
Which is okay. A mediocre movie is better than a bad one, but then this flick has to go and suddenly get smart. It begins to suggest that the heart isn't only using Terry for vengeance. The heart may be changing Terry into its original owner, setting up a second and more intriguing conflict. The heart isn't only taking revenge it's also taking Terry's identity. But as that concept starts to emerge from the mire, the film abruptly turns stupid and falls into an overly melodramatic ending that only works because Tell Tale violates its central premise. All of the supernatural powers the heart has demonstrated throughout the story are pounded away by the Almighty Plot Hammer and Terry is left a helpless victim before his enemies because writer David Callaham apparently couldn't figure out a way to write a climax that didn't involve one cliché after another.
All of the actors here do good work, with Josh Lucas exceeding the barren script to create believable relationships for Terry with both Angela and Liz. Lena Headey admirably soldiers through a typically thankless girlfriend role and looks amazing. Brian Cox is possibly the best thing in the production as a cynical, defeated cop given new hope by the unbelievable until he's betrayed by a crushingly trite motivation. And director Michael Cuesta does a perfectly acceptable job.
It's dispiriting turn at the end leaves Tell Tale a sub-mediocre 90 minute movie that could have been a worthwhile 2 hour flick if it had followed through on its potential. It didn't, so it's not worth your while
Based loosely, and I mean very loosely, on Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", this motion picture is about Terry Bernard (Josh Lucas). He's a recent heart transplant recipient trying to get his life back in order. He's got a young daughter named Angela (Beatrice Miller) with a terminal genetic disorder and Angela has a beautiful doctor named Liz (Lena Headey) who's also pretty fond of Terry. I'd like to tell you more about these characters but they don't have any distinct personalities. If you smushed all their defining character traits together you still wouldn't have anything resembling a three dimensional human being.
Terry starts having these episodes where he hears his heart thundering in his ears and sees strange images of people milling about in a dark room. These episodes eventually lead to Terry killing people and with the help of a jaded detective (Brian Cox), he learns that his victims are the people who killed the person whose heart now beats in Terry's chest. And that demanding, magical organ isn't gong to let Terry stop killing.
Now, let me give you an example of what I mean by Tell Tale being mediocre. A pretty big deal is made of Angela's genetic disorder, to the point where there's an entire scene built around it. Terry having a sick daughter, though, let alone one with a very rare and heart-breaking condition, never goes anywhere or amounts to anything. It doesn't play any role in the plot. It's not connected to anything else in the story. Angela's disease doesn't mirror Terry's condition or link up with it thematically somehow. You could make Angela healthy and Liz her math tutor without changing anything significant in this film. And that's what I mean by mediocre. Tell Tale isn't bad, there's simply no depth or complexity or sophistication to any of it.
Which is okay. A mediocre movie is better than a bad one, but then this flick has to go and suddenly get smart. It begins to suggest that the heart isn't only using Terry for vengeance. The heart may be changing Terry into its original owner, setting up a second and more intriguing conflict. The heart isn't only taking revenge it's also taking Terry's identity. But as that concept starts to emerge from the mire, the film abruptly turns stupid and falls into an overly melodramatic ending that only works because Tell Tale violates its central premise. All of the supernatural powers the heart has demonstrated throughout the story are pounded away by the Almighty Plot Hammer and Terry is left a helpless victim before his enemies because writer David Callaham apparently couldn't figure out a way to write a climax that didn't involve one cliché after another.
All of the actors here do good work, with Josh Lucas exceeding the barren script to create believable relationships for Terry with both Angela and Liz. Lena Headey admirably soldiers through a typically thankless girlfriend role and looks amazing. Brian Cox is possibly the best thing in the production as a cynical, defeated cop given new hope by the unbelievable until he's betrayed by a crushingly trite motivation. And director Michael Cuesta does a perfectly acceptable job.
It's dispiriting turn at the end leaves Tell Tale a sub-mediocre 90 minute movie that could have been a worthwhile 2 hour flick if it had followed through on its potential. It didn't, so it's not worth your while