Playboy critic Stephen Rebello reviews McConaughey and Anne Hathaway in the preposterous potboiler
The miscalculations in Serenity aren’t just epic—they’re fatal. The movie costars Matthew McConaughey as a PTSD-suffering war vet and tourist-fishing boat captain; Anne Hathaway as Karen, his battered, Jessica Rabbit-esque ex-girlfriend and baby mama; and her rich, mobster hubby Jason Clarke (the batterer).
Terrific writer-director Steven Knight (Locke, Peaky Blinders) presents his case as a cartoony, loopy, highly stylized modern-day film noir. If you’ve seen the great stuff like, say, Body Heat, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice or even the also-rans like Pushover and The Hot Spot, then you know the drill. Steamy weather. Feverish passions and naked lust. Duped, dim-witted heroes. A dangerous dame or two. Murder most foul.
Serenity plays things simple-minded to the point of parody. On a teensy tropical island called Plymouth, vixen Hathaway (breathy, bewigged, wildly campy) turns up and wants her rummy, sad-sack ex—named “Baker Dill,” no less—to ice her hilariously over-the-top villainous, abusive spouse. Everyone gets to chew on stiff, stilted dialogue as if it were … well, albacore. You see, Dill, struggling to make ends meet, is utterly obsessed with catching a giant tuna named “Justice” (no, really) that keeps eluding him. Or, as characters keep referring to the big fish: “That tuna that’s in your head.”
Our crusty, grizzled, skinny-dipper of a hero eases his pain over a troubled relationship with his kid (Rafael Sayegh seen in soft-focus flashbacks) by playing out sex-games-for-hire with his neighbor (Diane Lane) in scenes almost too ridiculous and laughable to be believed. Oh, and Lane keeps yammering on and on about her cat—and we’re pretty certain she’s not using a euphemism for a body part.
Everyone in front of and behind the camera has done such good work in the past that maybe we should consider Serenity a bold but wacky misstep.
Of course, with the kittenish ice princess Karen (Hathaway) around, expect an equally goofy love scene with McConaughey, staged during a nighttime rainstorm. Anyway, murder is in the air, and the price is tempting: $10 million to take Hathaway’s loathsome husband Frank out on his “Serenity” boat, hurl him overboard and let him sleep with the fishes.
It’s all so corny and cardboard, but then, damned if Knight doesn’t pull off a ballsy but absolutely gaga about-face twist that makes us rethink everything we’ve already seen. It’d be just wrong to spoil it for you, but come to think of it, Knight has made a movie so preposterous—but so lacking in trashy fun—that he’s already taken care of that for us. Everyone in front of and behind the camera has done such good work in the past that maybe we should consider Serenity a bold but wacky misstep.