The Entitled (2011)

Just so...so bad

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

This is a nice little thriller, which I might have given a 6 instead of a 7, but I did like the fact it is low budget and still managed to get quite some good talent on board. Like Ray Liotta, whom probably was convinced by the script. And while not everything works out the way it might have been planned (script and story-wise that is), the whole thing feels very well thought of.There's different endings, but I like the one they chose and stuck with. You can watch the other ones on your disc under the special features if you're curious like me. Nice additions, though probably won't make the movie better for you, if you didn't like it the first time around.

movie starts off with a great aerial shot of what i believe is Ontario city which is totally misleading because the whole thing takes place is the deepest woods.actors did quiet a good job although protagonist is very hard to like. he kisses his mother like 5 times in the first 10 minutes so nobody could miss the fact that he cares for her. also very hard to believe that his female accomplice could ever fall in love with him that much. they don't seem to have much in common.scene which upsets me the most is the escape of the 2 left hostages. they walk out of the house like they are 5 year olds who try to sneak around moms back to get to the candy drawer. how could No one be watching them? they literally have nothing to do. one of them plays fallout 3 because he is so bored. to be fair fallout 3 is one of the best games ever developed.of course this American dream thing plays along throughout the movie and subtly gets mentioned every now and then but in the end it doesn't seem to conclude in any way.the emo male accomplice casually kicks her alleged good friend to death (or maybe not?) for no reason whatsoever like he slaughtered his opponents in fallout 3 earlier. at that point i began to wonder if i looked at the movie from a wrong perspective. maybe it was a comedy all along.i kind of liked the dispute of the 3 fathers which on its own got me to watch the thing through. but also was disappointed by the reaction of one of the fathers after he realizes that his son died. could have given the story another nice twist.

A group of under-privileged kids starving for money and attention; a group of over-privileged kids starving for action and attention; a group of over-privileged adults trying to be content with their current state of life. That's "The Entitled." One group wants what the others have and the others just plain want. If you want an intelligent, thought-out thriller, you've got it.The film starts out a little pedestrian and juvenile with pointless scenes and then a few scenes continuously pointing out that our main hero was poor. But as it turns out, those scenes weren't pointless or over-done, you just had to wait until the end to figure it out. Everything contributes to the final result.Our main hero is Paul Dynan (Kevin Zegers) — broke, jobless, defeated, and almost option-less. A last ditch effort to save his mother and their house, he abducts three local rich kids, uses two misfit friends to torture them, and tries to get money out of their fathers.The brilliant aspects of this film which they did so well were the different relationship dynamics. The group of rich, entitled kids consisted of two males and one female. One couple but all three were friends. The group of poor, angry kids was exactly the same (just minus the money). The three fathers had the same relationships that their kids had, just a taller, older version.Continuing in the vein of brilliant relationship dynamics, the plot of the kidnapping was propelled forward by how everybody acted within their own group. Apparently the key to a successful crime (or not successful) is knowing how all the individuals will act. The key to a successful crime thriller is making sure that your characters act in interesting ways.The lead acting was very impressive, just as I was frequently in awe of how impressively smart the turns were in this thriller, I was amazed by how natural and creepy Zegers could be. Ray Liotta and the two other actors playing the fathers were equally as arresting.The minor actors couldn't overcome the sometimes awkward and painful dialogue. Now don't get me wrong, the screenplay by William Morrisey is actually pretty good story-wise, he just doesn't give a good voice to the over-privileged, entitled rich kids. But then again, who does? I still think the opening sequences could have been tightened up to help me realize how important they actually are to the story. But above all else, "The Entitled" made me think and I like watching films about some characters who do think and some characters who don't think. And I'll let you figure out which groups they belong to.

The Entitled began well, with excellent cinematography helped by some aerial shots for the opening.The characters are all, unfortunately, written very shallowly, with almost no information provided beyond what is seen on screen.The plot concerns a young man, Paul, who is seen at the beginning struggling to get a job (even though he is perfectly qualified) and providing for his ill mother.Very quickly, the movie introduces Paul's plot to kidnap the silver-spoon-fed children of a trio of rich men. He himself looks like the rich men's children (college age, attractive, great hair), but apparently without the money.His accomplices are another college-age guy and girl. One seems to be his girlfriend (who doesn't seem to be his type) and the other is a Columbine-killer type.The movie begins to fail very quickly once the three young people are kidnapped. The main kidnapper is portrayed as very detail-oriented and together, very purposeful, but he makes mistake after mistake that drive the rest of the story, making it very contrived.SPOILERS FOLLOW The main kidnapper, Paul, is describes as very detail-oriented and his plot is intricate and involves a bit of preparation, but once the plot begins, he sits around letting things happen which threaten his success unnecessarily.His two cohorts are unstable, which he purposely knows, but he makes almost no effort to stop them from doing things to screw things up. Some of this unstable behavior turns out to have been acceptable, but there are some things that they do that he couldn't have foreseen but are played off as being foreseen by him.For example, he tells his Goth cohorts that there is an explosive device at the location where the fathers of his kidnap victims are waiting for the return of their kids. His goth girlfriend sneaks down to where the 3 kids are being held and tells them of this. Later it turns out that there is no such explosive device. 2 of the kidnapped kids escape (because -- duh -- no one was watching them) and make a bee-line for where the parents are waiting to warn them of the impending detonation. This beeline keeps them off the road so that they don't see the main kidnapper driving on the road. SO -- we are expected to buy that Paul planned on lying to his cohorts about the device knowing that they will spill its existence to the kidnappees, knowing that they will escape with enough time to hope to get to their parents' location, knowing that they will have to go through through the forest because they don't have time to follow the road and get their in time, knowing that it will keep them from seeing him escape... but none of it mattering because there really was no explosive device and if they had just been kept locked up there would have been no need for the subterfuge.Paul makes a point of giving his male cohort a 9mm with blanks, knowing that he would be trigger-happy. All of this is played off as having been part of his plan, that the intended to blame all of what happened on the two cohorts. But it is beyond intelligent belief to accept that he would have planned everything will so many details relying on the out-of-control behavior of the other two.The kidnapping is effected by the girl standing in the middle of the road. Coming up on a girl standing threateningly in the middle of the road, the driver is, of course, inclined to stop his car and walk up to her, allowing the Columbine-type guy to "surprise" him with the shotgun (wait, wasn't he NOT supposed to have been given a gun with real ammo?) The 3 kids are taken to the mountain home of one of the other rich parents, which is just 2 miles from where the rich parents are staying in the other mountain home. They are put in a storage space beneath the house. They are tied up and basically NOT WATCHED. Occasional visits are made to them to provide proof of life and to intimidate them.The kidnappers spend their time staring at an unchanging computer screen and playing violent First-Person Shooter video games. NO ONE is tasked with watching to make sure their kidnap victims do not escape.Paul knows that his two accomplices are mentally unhinged, and makes a point of loading blanks into the pistol he gives the guy, but the guy at other times has the shotgun that IS properly loaded, and Paul hands the shotgun to the girl who promptly kills one of the hostages with it. For such a prepared plan, it reeks of poor planning, yet such a glaring plot hole drives the story forward.He has given a pistol loaded with blanks to the other cohort. Later, when he tries to shoot one of the hostages with the gun, the man falls back as if hit but then gets up and runs away. He could have killed someone with it not realizing it was loaded with blanks by pressing it against their body or head. It simply should have been loaded with dummy rounds, which don't have any explosive force.There are other numerous dangling plot points and unanswered questions.END OF SPOILERS For a film that looks as good as it does on screen, and with good performances from the actors (although the kidnap victims are severely underutilized, especially Laura Vandervoort) it is decidedly disappointing that the story fails completely. With a running time of 1 hour, 25 minutes (without the end credits), there was ample time to flesh out the characters and fix the numerous plot holes. It seems to come down to lazy story-telling in the end.The end result is a bad film, not worth watching.