Movie Review: The Gift
It’s nearly impossible to say anything about what makes The Gift so good without revealing its two crucial, spine-tinglingly effective plot twists. The best any critic can really do in reviewing the flick is to say: The Gift is very, very good. Just stop reading and go see it now. But since I’m obligated to shake down something more than fifty words about the film, here are a few things that can be said about The Gift without blowing its surprises.
For its first third or so The Gift is a perfectly entertaining 1990s-style thriller. A bright and successful young couple, Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall), move from Chicago to Simon’s hometown – Los Angeles. Everything seems rosy at 
first for the pair. Simon’s just gotten a lucrative job and they’ve found a swanky new house, complete with a koi pond along the front walk. But we learn there’s lingering sadness in their marriage due to Robyn’s recent miscarriage of their child. Additional upheaval arrives in the form of Simon’s old schoolmate Gordon (Joel Edgerton), a socially stunted type who’s oddly enthusiastic to run into the couple. Dropping off gifts on Simon and Robyn’s doorstep and showing up at their home unannounced, Gordon becomes an increasingly unwelcome presence in Simon’s eyes – but in Robyn’s more sympathetic view, a kind if unconventional friend.
There are plenty of laughs to be found in the awkward comedy of upper-class manners in this setup, as you anticipate the trashy, over-the-top shocks to come when Gordon’s bizarre obsession with Simon and Robyn inevitably reaches a fever pitch. God bless The Gift for delivering on those expectations, but with far more depth, ingenuity, and even subtlety than any thriller of this type usually displays. The closing twist, to a certain degree, undoes some of the cleverness and intelligence of the first, but it’s enough of a knockout that it’s hard to quibble with.
Again to preserve the surprises, any comments on the acting in The Gift must be even vaguer. The performances are terrific, especially for a film that is again basically a lurid thriller at heart. The always-reliable Hall (The Town [2010], Iron Man 3 [2013]) conveys so much in her face as a woman struggling with massive personal tragedy and the perplexing mystery of her husband’s old friend. Bateman has perhaps the film’s best scene, inhabiting a dynamic role with aplomb. He’s had a character like Simon in him since his days as the ostensible straight man on Arrested Development, and it’s entertaining and still surprising to see him build his range in this direction.
The less said about Edgerton’s performance, the better, but suffice it to say that he writes and portrays Gordon with remarkable complexity while playing completely against the suave, tough-guy types we’re familiar with seeing him as. Edgerton has proved himself a fine, unshowy performer in films like Warrior (2011) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012), but who knew he had this in him? His visual style as a director is serviceable if otherwise unremarkable, but he displays an excellent command of his cast and a wicked gift for narrative subversion. If this is what he came up with on his first outing as writer and director, we can only hope The Gift does well enough for him to make another.
Okay, that’s all I’ll say about The Gift. Now go see it already.
Patrick Dunn
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