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Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated Criminal (2016) in Movies

Jul 21, 2017  
Criminal (2016)
Criminal (2016)
2016 | Action, Drama, Mystery
5
5.6 (8 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Bad dialogue (2 more)
Rubbish Ending
Poorly written script
How To Waste A Great Cast
The trailers for this movie had me sold, as did the top class cast and the plot also sounded interesting, even if it is very similar to something that Ryan Reynolds was involved in previously. Last year he was in a film with Ben Kingsley called Selfless, in which Kingsley played an old millionaire who wanted his brain to be transferred into a young man’s body, and so he took over the body of Reynolds’ character. In this movie Reynolds plays a government agent who gets killed in action, but before he died, he had information that no one else knew and that the government needed. So the head of his team, played by Gary Oldman, recruits a scientist, played by Tommy Lee Jones, to use pioneering biology to transfer the memories of Reynolds’ character into Kevin Costner’s character, who is a psychopath with a child’s mind and has spent the majority of his life in prison. Predictably, Costner’s character starts developing symptoms of multiple personality disorder and having memories of Reynold’s character and from this point on, the film is kind of a mess. A poorly written script results in the audience struggling to find anyone to root with and this lack of a protagonist causes the movie to feel aimless from the start. The closest thing we get to a good guy is Ryan Reynolds and he dies at the very start of the movie, but then the filmmaker expects you to suddenly root for Kevin Costner’s character, even though he is a murderous psycho with absolutely no morals. Gary Oldman certainly isn’t a good guy, since he’s willing to go to whatever measures necessary to get this information that Reynolds’ character had when he died, no matter how extreme or morally ambiguous. Honestly this is one to skip, there isn’t even any payoff at the end of the movie and most of the dialogue throughout is pure cliché nonsense, go see something else instead.
  
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Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2474 KP) rated A Simple Murder (Will Rees, #1) in Books

Feb 9, 2020  
A Simple Murder (Will Rees, #1)
A Simple Murder (Will Rees, #1)
Eleanor Kuhns | 2012
8
8.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Simple Time but Complex Murder
It’s 1795, and Will Rees has spent the last few years as a traveling weaver while grieving his wife. He’s left his son and his Maine farm in the care of his sister and her husband, but his most recent trip home leads to the discovery that they’ve been abusing that trust, and his son, David, has run away to a Shaker community over a day’s travel away. Will goes to try to repair their relationship only to find himself involved in a murder. One of the Shaker women has been killed in their community, and the Elders have asked Will to find the killer. His problem, however, is that he is an outsider. Will anyone trust him enough to share the information he needs to solve the case?

I’m always on the lookout for a good historical mystery, so I was quite eager to pick this one up. I’m not familiar with the Shakers, so that was also an interesting aspect of the book. The plot is good with plenty of twists and a logical conclusion, however, I felt like the pacing could have been better. That might have just been me since Will could only talk to a couple of people at a time if he had to travel far to talk to them. This is a historical mystery, after all. That travel time may have helped lead me to feel like things were slow. The characters are strong. I really came to care for Will and several of the others. The characters were just as strong, and I had no trouble keeping them apart. However, as Will begins to find complex family relationships, I had a hard time keeping all of those straight. The everyday details of life in the time period were strong and helped make me feel like I was back in time when I was reading the book. I am definitely planning to visit Will again to find out what happens to him next.
  
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Zuky the BookBum (15 KP) rated The Scholl Case: The Deadly End of a Marriage in Books

Mar 15, 2018  
TS
The Scholl Case: The Deadly End of a Marriage
Anja Reich-Osang | 2016
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Also read my review here: http://bookbum.weebly.com/book-reviews/the-scholl-case-by-anja-reich-osang

<i><b>He smiles, but he doesn’t show what he has in his heart.</i></b>

I really enjoyed this book, but for reasons I can’t really pinpoint. It wasn’t like any other true crime book I’ve read, it was more like a memoir of Heinrich Scholl’s life. It was certainly a very dry read in parts, in terms of the actual crime, but I just quite liked reading about how well Heinrich succeed in his life. By the time we got the trial, I was actually very excited to see how it all played out, and I was really rushing through the pages (in a good way). The one big downfall with this book was that I don’t know enough about the history of Germany - the war and the fall of the Berlin wall etc - so a lot of the relevance to these events and Scholl’s life were a little lost on me.

Heinrich was abused mentally as a child and by his wife - even after all his successes in life, so it was kind of unstandable for him to fall into these relationships, with the lady from the town hall and with Nani. and call it “love”. Because he was never loved beforehand. It’s sad really. And his desperation to succeed as an older man was also very upsetting. But he was also wrong to string his wife along for years and years, if he was really unhappy, he should have tried harder to leave her.

Heinrich’s wife, Gitti, was a horrid woman! I understand the marriage they had was pretty much a complete sham, but she treated her husband like dirt. Another reason it’s no surprise Heinrich went looking for other relationships. But I also feel sorry for Gitti, not just because she was murdered, She lost all her family in the most depressing of ways and because she obviously had some troubles of wanting and not succeeding to have the perfect life, and this clearly damaged her. She clearly had some mental issues that made her flit between cursing Heinrich, wanting Heinrich back, and killing herself.

The crime of Brigitte Scholl’s death is certainly a strange one. Everything points to Heinrich as the murderer, but then it also doesn’t. I’m not sure I believe it was calculated murder. Manslaughter? Maybe. But murder, no. I actually find it hard to believe he did it at all, but maybe that’s because I have so much pity for him.

This book just leaves you wondering around with your own thoughts. It comes to a conclusion, the charge of murder, but it doesn’t lead you to any final decision. The choice is yours to make; is Heinrich Scholl guilty of murdering his wife and dog?

Thanks to Netgalley and Text Publishing for giving me the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.