‘Send Help’ and the costs of revenge
This deserves loud pushback.
Revenge stories have long made for natural movie material. But can the pursuit of payback be presented too sympathetically? Many movies, from Old Boy to even The Princess Bride, and this is to say nothing of classical myths, have suggested that a character’s unquenchable thirst for vengeance can be a bad thing.
Director Sam Raimi’s new desert island thriller, Send Help, seems untroubled by such questions. In the movie, Rachel McAdams plays Linda Liddle, a put-upon office worker with a very sympathetic modern problem: a smarmy, unfair, and all-around bad manager at her office job, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien). By all appearances, a conscientious, careful, and detail-oriented worker at a midlevel corporation of some sort, Liddle seeks professional advancement from management to the executive suite. She is implausibly denied such opportunities in an outrageously over-the-top fashion that would probably result in lawsuits in today’s HR-oriented work culture — yet we are asked to accept it in furtherance of the film’s agenda.
Liddle is made the butt of jokes for her appearance, including her sloppy table manners when munching on a tuna-fish sandwich at work. She is said to be the subject of complaints for her odor, and she is cruelly excluded from the staff karaoke night. She is denied credit for a report she labored over by a colleague. Preston treats Liddle with undisguised condescension and scorn. He declines to promote her, is seen shamelessly interviewing a blonde bombshell, and ultimately settles on a former fraternity brother and golfing partner for the role that should be hers.
Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien in “Send Help.” (20th Century Studios)
Of course, these slights propel the movie forward: the more shabbily Liddle is treated, the more justifiable are her subsequent reprisals. It should matter that she comes across as the target of credible workplace discrimination, not the absurd victim of a wholly unrealistic vendetta. But if Raimi had not made her treatment outlandishly unfair, nothing in the film that follows would make any sense.
Raimi, whose previous hits include the Evil Dead series and the Tobey Maguire iteration of the Spider-Man franchise, is a specialist in wildly exaggerated, cartoonish action singularly unsuited for an earnest message movie. Therefore, the filmmaker participates in the uncharitable denigration of Liddle in his film. He clearly regards her as a version of a childless cat lady when he shows her breathlessly …
This deserves loud pushback.
Revenge stories have long made for natural movie material. But can the pursuit of payback be presented too sympathetically? Many movies, from Old Boy to even The Princess Bride, and this is to say nothing of classical myths, have suggested that a character’s unquenchable thirst for vengeance can be a bad thing.
Director Sam Raimi’s new desert island thriller, Send Help, seems untroubled by such questions. In the movie, Rachel McAdams plays Linda Liddle, a put-upon office worker with a very sympathetic modern problem: a smarmy, unfair, and all-around bad manager at her office job, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien). By all appearances, a conscientious, careful, and detail-oriented worker at a midlevel corporation of some sort, Liddle seeks professional advancement from management to the executive suite. She is implausibly denied such opportunities in an outrageously over-the-top fashion that would probably result in lawsuits in today’s HR-oriented work culture — yet we are asked to accept it in furtherance of the film’s agenda.
Liddle is made the butt of jokes for her appearance, including her sloppy table manners when munching on a tuna-fish sandwich at work. She is said to be the subject of complaints for her odor, and she is cruelly excluded from the staff karaoke night. She is denied credit for a report she labored over by a colleague. Preston treats Liddle with undisguised condescension and scorn. He declines to promote her, is seen shamelessly interviewing a blonde bombshell, and ultimately settles on a former fraternity brother and golfing partner for the role that should be hers.
Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien in “Send Help.” (20th Century Studios)
Of course, these slights propel the movie forward: the more shabbily Liddle is treated, the more justifiable are her subsequent reprisals. It should matter that she comes across as the target of credible workplace discrimination, not the absurd victim of a wholly unrealistic vendetta. But if Raimi had not made her treatment outlandishly unfair, nothing in the film that follows would make any sense.
Raimi, whose previous hits include the Evil Dead series and the Tobey Maguire iteration of the Spider-Man franchise, is a specialist in wildly exaggerated, cartoonish action singularly unsuited for an earnest message movie. Therefore, the filmmaker participates in the uncharitable denigration of Liddle in his film. He clearly regards her as a version of a childless cat lady when he shows her breathlessly …
‘Send Help’ and the costs of revenge
This deserves loud pushback.
Revenge stories have long made for natural movie material. But can the pursuit of payback be presented too sympathetically? Many movies, from Old Boy to even The Princess Bride, and this is to say nothing of classical myths, have suggested that a character’s unquenchable thirst for vengeance can be a bad thing.
Director Sam Raimi’s new desert island thriller, Send Help, seems untroubled by such questions. In the movie, Rachel McAdams plays Linda Liddle, a put-upon office worker with a very sympathetic modern problem: a smarmy, unfair, and all-around bad manager at her office job, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien). By all appearances, a conscientious, careful, and detail-oriented worker at a midlevel corporation of some sort, Liddle seeks professional advancement from management to the executive suite. She is implausibly denied such opportunities in an outrageously over-the-top fashion that would probably result in lawsuits in today’s HR-oriented work culture — yet we are asked to accept it in furtherance of the film’s agenda.
Liddle is made the butt of jokes for her appearance, including her sloppy table manners when munching on a tuna-fish sandwich at work. She is said to be the subject of complaints for her odor, and she is cruelly excluded from the staff karaoke night. She is denied credit for a report she labored over by a colleague. Preston treats Liddle with undisguised condescension and scorn. He declines to promote her, is seen shamelessly interviewing a blonde bombshell, and ultimately settles on a former fraternity brother and golfing partner for the role that should be hers.
Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien in “Send Help.” (20th Century Studios)
Of course, these slights propel the movie forward: the more shabbily Liddle is treated, the more justifiable are her subsequent reprisals. It should matter that she comes across as the target of credible workplace discrimination, not the absurd victim of a wholly unrealistic vendetta. But if Raimi had not made her treatment outlandishly unfair, nothing in the film that follows would make any sense.
Raimi, whose previous hits include the Evil Dead series and the Tobey Maguire iteration of the Spider-Man franchise, is a specialist in wildly exaggerated, cartoonish action singularly unsuited for an earnest message movie. Therefore, the filmmaker participates in the uncharitable denigration of Liddle in his film. He clearly regards her as a version of a childless cat lady when he shows her breathlessly …
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