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+ Career-Killer of the Year: Shia LaBeouf
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| A man falls from the running mascara of a massive woman's eye on this artistic poster for Fredrik Bond's Charlie Countryman |
Charlie's mother dies of cancer, whereupon her spirit tells young Charlie that he should go to Bucharest, Romania. Without real purpose he travels there and falls in love with the wife of a gangster.
Charlie Countryman is written by Matt Drake (Project X (2012)) and directed by debuting commercial director Fredrik Bond (The Mood (2004, short)).
Bond must have bet that a sufficiently cute lead would bar the audience against asking questions of Charlie's inscrutable dispositions, but I for one did ask questions despite Shia LaBeouf's (Nymphomaniac (2013)) attractiveness. We know next to nothing about Charlie and his headlong journey to Romania, a country that seems uniformly horrible here, and he is impossible to identify with. All the characters around him are thin sketches, and several of the actors struggle with the vagueness. It doesn't raise the already strained level of authenticity that Evan Rachel Wood (Barefoot (2014)) is playing a Romanian; and Mads Mikkelsen (After the Wedding/Efter Brylluppet (2006)) an unspecified brute named Nigel; but LaBeouf is committed - and has great hair, (although we already knew that.)
But Charlie Countryman is involuntarily comical; it is so obvious as a commercial gun's somewhat pretentious and very hollow, futile attempt at a light and yet deep and visually striking fantasy, which also transcends genres, (it would have been an impressive feat if pulled off, surely.) Bond's film instead reeks of beginner's firsts and holds no great insights into film or the 'rules' of the medium.
Think of Charlie Countryman as Tom Tykwer's 17 year-old son's Romanian ecstasy movie. It is basically LaBeouf's romanian acid trip, deservedly the butt of a joke.
Related post:
2013 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED VI]
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: Unknown
Box office: 443k $
= Uncertain, but undoubtedly a box office disaster
[Charlie Countryman premiered 21 January (Sundance Film Festival) and runs 103 minutes. The project was moved forward due to LaBeouf's fondness of the script. Shooting took place from May 2012 - ? in Chicago, Illinois and Bucharest, Romania. LaBeouf actually ingested LSD for realism in the scene where his character is on acid. The film opened #72 to a 7k $ first weekend in 15 theaters in North America, where it grossed 11k $ (2.5 % of the total gross). Its 3 biggest markets were Russia with 340k $ (76.7 %), France with 35k $ (7.9 %) and the UK with 19k $ (4.3 %). If made on a very low budget of 5 mil. $ (10 mil. $ is more likely), the film would rank as a box office disaster with a projected return of just 0.08 times its cost. The-Numbers.com estimate the film's domestic home video sales at 332k $. Bond has stuck with making commercials since, but is announced to direct soccer drama Fearless. LaBeouf returned in Nymphomaniac (2013). Charlie Countryman is rotten at 27 % with a 4.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Charlie Countryman?
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