![]() (Presumably, Dill's son loves Hemingway and Double Indemnity.) The video game element is just a gimmick. The game this child has designed would be repetitive to play - most of the tasks would involve fishing, drinking, and occasionally having sex with a woman in town played by Diane Lane - and it's primarily inspired by a set of tropes and cultural objects that would likely have no appeal to a modern teenager. He doesn't need to pepper the script with Fortnite or Twitch references, but a little effort would go a long way. Graham Bartholomew/Aviron Picturesīesides the ludicrous way the mystery is unraveled, here's the most significant problem with Serenity's big gamer twist: Knight does not seem curious about any of the specifics of video games as a narrative form. He's trapped in the game and there's no escape. This revelation sends Dill into a Truman Show-worthy existential crisis about the nature of reality, identity, and free will. As Strong's businessman painstakingly explains in the movie's most baffling sequence, where he gulps down booze and presents Dill with a fish tracker from his private fishing company, he is, in fact, "the rules." The rules of what exactly? A video game being coded (and presumably played?) by Dill's brilliant gamer son, who uses it as a therapeutic escape from his violent home life. So, what is the actual twist? Is Baker Dill living in purgatory? A dream-like dimension? An episode of the Twilight Zone? No, not exactly. However, the low-concept appeal of the premise is itself part of the movie's con: Once the puzzle pieces fall into place, when you figure out what the son and the business man are up to, you realize you've been watching another high-concept meta-movie about "the nature of storytelling" the whole time. The setup has a simplicity to it that feels jarring and refreshing, like a shot of whiskey in contrast to the craft cocktails offered up by prestige TV shows. Thanks to McConaughey's bronzed lunkhead charisma, Hathaway's willingness to lean into her character's slippery contradictions, and some truly outlandish visual choices - we get a couple Matrix-like camera swoops - Serenity has a sleazy, lurid pull to it. They're buzzing in your face like flies for most of the movie's opening stretch. A writer with a tendency to double-underline his themes, Knight doesn't place these plot elements in the background or fit them snugly into his pastiche. Also, a nebbish businessman played by Succession stand-out Jeremy Strong keeps making futile attempts to contact Dill with a message of some sort. In between the Jimmy Buffett mystery plot, we keep learning about Dill's son Patrick, a prodigy who hides from his tyrannical step-father by typing away at the computer in his room. So far, so noir-y.īut, even from the start, it's clear that Knight is up to something a bit more high-concept than an old-school genre tribute. She offers Dill $10 million cash to murder her loathsome hubby at sea, and Dill, an ex-soldier with a broken moral compass, is tempted. Dill's ex-wife Karen (Hathaway) disrupts his idyllic Beach Bum-esque life of drinking and fishing by arriving with her repugnant, abusive new husband Frank (Jason Clarke). ![]() And, at least for the first hour or so, that's what Serenity is. The emphasis on aquatic life isn't exactly highlighted in the film's steamy marketing campaign, which goes to great lengths to sell the movie as a twist-filled take on Body Heat, with Anne Hathaway playing the mysterious femme fatale. ![]() The film's script, which was penned by its director, Steven Knight (the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind the Tom Hardy car showpiece Locke and the Tom Hardy top-hat series Taboo), is filled with dialogue about tuna. This story contains spoilers for Serenity and discusses the ending in detail.Īt first, the strangest aspect of the crime thriller Serenity is that the film's protagonist, a fisherman named Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey), spends his days obsessing over a tuna he's dubbed "Justice." He lives on a vaguely tropical island with a handful of oddball locals and "one cop in town," but plenty of fish in the sea. ![]()
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