Silent Partner (2005)

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

While it's not in the same class as "Gorky Park" (1983), fans of that film will find many of the same story elements, locations, and production design in "Silent Partner" (2005). It is yet another story of greedy corruption in the post-Communist Soviet Union and like "Gorky Park" it is professionally made with an expensive look and feel.With a 96-minute running length "Silent Partner" is one of the few films that would not benefit from a little trimming. In fact, by the end you suspect that there has already been considerable trimming; and that the price for keeping all the expensively staged action sequences is the loss of so much narrative material and character development sequences that the story borders on incomprehensible.It might be useful to keep pen and paper handy during your initial viewing, carefully tracking the assorted physically indistinguishable characters that enter and leave the film without explanation or background details, and then reappear in later sequences. But even this would not enable anyone to adequately sort through the confusion, because it is like tracking a bunch of identical size ants milling around an anthill.Apparently all this is not in the service of making the story a mental challenge for the viewer. At the end you are supposed to sort through the Hitchcock MacGuffin's and think how cleverly they fooled you. But all they really did was keep you in a state of dazed ignorance because you were not told enough about the motivations and the basic premise to have anticipated much of anything. This means almost every development in the story is its own little "deux ex machina" moment; "a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new character, ability, or object".In a nutshell, CIA intelligence analyst Gordon Patrick (Nick Moran) is sent to Moscow to investigate of the suicide of Russia's Minister of Finance, Mikhail Garin. The suicide occurred just before the renewal of a massive loan program between the two countries, which has been placed on hold pending Patrick's review of the incident. You learn that the relatively inexperienced agent was chosen by high-level Russian and American interests because he is expected to simply rubber stamp the results of the Soviet's own investigation.But just prior to his death, Garin entrusted his unsavory daughter Dina (Tara Reid) with a brief case of secrets, which she is trying to turn over to Patrick.The main problem is that while the crew is good at setting up great shots and staging decent action scenes, the writer/director James D. Deck and the editor are pretty much clueless about how to tell a comprehensible story, build suspense, or make dramatic revelations.For example, midway into the film Patrick and Dina are being hunted by a nefarious group of agents and/or police (or maybe mercenaries, or maybe police who are moonlighting as mercenaries, or maybe some who are and some are not, or maybe…???), it is never really explained. Gordon wants to come out of the cold and he phones home to set up a meeting at a local restaurant. Things go badly and there is blazing shootout with all sorts of good guys and bad guys banging away at each other with machine guns and running around like a bunch of scalded chimps. No sooner is one guy shot than somebody entirely new to the story pops up from somewhere to continue the fight. Although you can't really tell the bad people from the good people, the real problem for a viewer is that it is impossible to gauge the progress of the confrontation, the director has not bothered to provide even the most basic information about the extent of each side's immediate tactical resources.Deck needs to be told by his producers that while confusion has its place in a movie, substituting it for suspense is not a good idea.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

No stupid bond-style humour. Decent depiction of Moscow, Russia (I ought to know, since I live here). Rather entertaining...There were only two strange things to it: 1. the ending left everyone clueless as to what actually happened (although, as someone here mentioned, that might just be a lead-in into a sequel) 2. the main characters never bothered to mask themselves or even put on some sunglasses while on the streets, even when national television reported that they were wanted terrorists, and, strangely enough, no one bothered to recognize them (come to think of it, the streets of Moscow, the largest city on the continent, were, curiously enough, completely empty, except for one or two scenes) Probably nothing to call home about, unless you are fans of Moran or Reid, but there are certainly much worse ways to spend an evening. Beats James Bond movies....

The story isn't very strong. Don't expect a "Bourne identity" kind of movie. It started of strong, Tara speaking Russian and it even sounded credible. (Not that I'm the Russian language expert.) Moscow had that darkish depressing look what gave this movie potential, I still believed in it. To bad it only took about half an hour to see they really missed the spot with this one. Acting was poor, maybe because the story itself was not very strong. There is this part in the movie where Gordon Patrick (Nick Moran) is having a conversation on the phone with the C.I.A., like you're listening to a Chinese synchronizer. W.T.F!? Too bad, the writer didn't even take little effort to give the main characters depth. Also, bit of a cheap and easy ending.Plus point is almost every scene where Tara Reid is in. Not that she's acting that well, in fact, she doesn't. But she really looks great in this movie. Overall, it was a bit of a disappointment. Rental material….maybe.

I am awed by the caliber of this film. James Deck has made a moderately good screenplay into an outstanding political thriller.The complexity of the film is particularly challenging. The plot begins with several different threads that interweave somewhere during the story. Director/Writer James Deck takes apart those threads and models a film based on the two protagonists, Reid and Moran. The myriad of supporting actors (including Gregg Henry ) that appear on screen subsequently all have distinct but nonetheless crucial roles to the plot.Moran, in what is and will probably be his career best role ever, shines as the intelligent and patriotic Gordon Patrick, a thinking man's hero. Reid lends incredible presence, as usual, to her interpretation of Dina.