The Family

I honestly can say I knew nothing about this movie going in. I caught the trailer maybe once or twice in other movies, and I constantly saw its release date coming closer and closer. But I never really took the time to learn anything about it, considering Luc Besson's filmography is mixed at best in recent years. Strangely, this movie was produced by Martin Scorsese, so it had that going for it. But I didn't care to read about it, had it low on my priority list, and didn't know what to expect or think.

I can honestly say, I still don't know what to think. It had its moments. It had its really brilliant moments. And its really terrible moments. And some moments that just made me raise my eyebrows. I understand that De Niro was at one point highly ranked in the mafia, I understand that his family is in the witness protection program. But why exactly is his family all extremely violent and unpredictable? It seems like a quirk written to be quirky, but not to have any bearing on the story. In fact, the reason the mafia finds them (oh stop bitching, what else did you think was going to happen?) isn't even related to the violence. Rather it's a silly slip up that frankly, I can't imagine would actually mean anything to anyone. It was one heck of a stretch. So we have this incredibly pointlessly violent family running around being incredibly pointlessly violent for no reason. It's not badass or fun, because there is really absolutely no reason for it. It was actually pretty disturbing. 

Then there's the awful narrative. It jumps between De Niro writing a book to get his thoughts down about his truth, mixed with his wife exploring their new town and getting into wacky shenanigans, the kids at school absolutely brutalizing their schoolmates, the daughter pursuing her math tutor in a particularly creepy subplot, and then out of nowhere the mafia chasing them down. Oh, and Tommy Lee Jones is there...?

That's the best way to describe the movie I suppose. Random. Really random. It never really knows how far is too far or whether or not the jokes are moving far enough. But it's also pretty clear that the creators knew exactly what they wanted this movie to be - a dark comedy, in the vein of perhaps a slower paced Red. But while Red had situations where violence was necessary (at least in its universe of badassness), this movie was trying to grasp too far to reality for me to believe that a family would be this unnecessarily violent. 

So I guess you could say I didn't like The Family. But I didn't dislike it either. It's just for those looking for a certain taste in their mouth, I'd hazard a guess that diehard family guy fans might enjoy the random violence and zany subplots, despite the slow pace. But it didn't necessarily work for me. 

Rank - 2/5