Michael_Elliott Closure (2007) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Alice (Gillian Anderson) is a successful business woman who has to attend a dinner for her work. She asks Adam (Danny Dyer) to take her to this party even though they've only known each other for a few minutes. The two attend the party and then on the way home they are attacked by three men. Adam is severely beaten and Alice is raped. The two of them suffer the mental strain of what happened and soon Alice thinks it would be best to get revenge on the attackers.CLOSURE was originally titled STRAIGHTHEADS when it was released in Britain but when it came to America it was given a new title and went straight-to-DVD, which is understandable because there's really nothing here that demands for it to have been shown in a theater. The quality of the picture is also lacking and with the rather graphic story it's doubtful too many people would have lined up on a Friday night to check this thing out. Part of me wanted to enjoy this movie more than I actually did but there's just no way to get around the fact that there were all sorts of problems here.As you can tell, this is yet another rape/revenge tale and there have been countless ones made over the past few decades. You've got trash like THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE as well as masterpieces like DEATH WISH. This film here doesn't really know if it wants to be a serious look at rape and its aftermath or if it just wants to be some sort of graphic revenge tale ala the remake of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. The film doesn't know what it wants to do so the viewer is pretty much just sitting there waiting for something to unfold and there were just too many logical issues that I had with the picture.For starters, not for a second did I buy the relationship between Alice and Adam. The problem I had is that after the rape we pretty much jump a month ahead and the two are emotionally distraught from the ordeal. That is fine but the screenplay makes Adam a real mess of a character. Crying. Can't perform sexually. He really becomes a broken nut case. I understand he got beaten but at the same time I have a hard time believing he would be so connected to Alice, a woman he knew for a matter of hours before the attack. I've read reviews where people called Adam a baby and a whiner but I don't mind seeing a "weak" guy on screen but the problem is the screenplay just doesn't do the character or the situation any favors.There's a twist that happens and some graphic violence that finally comes up. Both of these are handles quite well but at the same time it pretty much goes against what came before it. The film clocks in at a very brief 80-minutes, which is very short for a film from this period. There are some good moments here including the performances by the two leads. This is especially true for Anderson who was very believable in the role of the rape victim and I really loved the little touches she brought to the scenes right after the rape as well as her mental state throughout the entire film.CLOSURE is an okay film but the flaws keep it from being anything better. As it stands, fans of the rape/revenge genre might want to check it out but others should probably start somewhere else.

zulus88 Dan Reed, an award winning documentary director, débuts with a thriller that will only be watched for its self proclaimed shock value and soon forgotten for the lack of this and, quite frankly, any value whatsoever.Alice's (Gillian Anderson) and Adam's (Danny Dyer) meeting is one of a chance. After he installs an alarm system in her upper class apartment, she invites him to a dull house warming party in a countryside in the unlike role of a sex toy. Their accident is one of a chance too. Alice hits a deer and they are both forced to pull over to remove the suffering animal from the road. There, they are attacked by three men they passed by earlier on. Adam is brutally beat up and Alice's raped. After one month recovery, she manages to return to work and Adam, with one eye blind and his face scarred stays locked at her home, struggling to overcome his accident inflicted impotence. When Alice learns of her father's death she drives to the countryside again where she encounters one of the rapists. She persuades Adam to take revenge they supposedly deserve.Reed, with a brief 76 minutes running time, skips any unnecessary expositions but unfortunately in the process, looses most of the motivation for both the characters and the audience. What's left is paper thin. Dyer is his own, low class, laddish caricature and Anderson's middle aged, sexy businesswoman is played on a hysterical autopilot. Even their unlikely affair is played out with no true interest in an inevitable contrast they create. It seems that they both serve a foolish, deus ex machina plot where Reed's main moral concern is whether the revenge is not even more dehumanizing than animalistic behaviour that provokes it. He's bend on making a statement but with no interest in the process, he jumps right to the end far to quickly and makes the whole experience unconvincing and uninteresting.Straightheads, for the most part, plays out like a character film but the little emotional intimacy that the characters actually share, is blown away by the outbursts of violence and sex. They do little more but emphasize the growing brutalization of Adam and Alice-something so painfully obvious and insubstantial that it's difficult to find any justification for the grim tones that film hits. In its attempt on deep, structured emotional insight into the life post trauma, it seems to be too brief and relies too strongly on in-your-face violence to awake any serious afterthought.And even despite its length, Straightheads is a drag. With 20 minutes of deleted footage available on the DVD, it looks like it wasn't really sure of its narration's rhythm. It ultimately emphasizes little of the tension and drama that first rate thriller should provide and instead it dwells on cheap, worn out psychology. The metamorphosis of Adam and Alice is foreseeable and because of that disengaging. As the film, unbearably slowly, drifts towards its conclusion, Dyer's restrained pansy regresses into a violent psycho and the film reaches its feeble ending with no constructive point. It all ends too abruptly with ambiguity that is usually reserved for films of explicit intellectual strength. But Adam's stare on the audience remains empty- a worthless gesture, a last failed stunt committed by a film of a stunning, obscure numbness.Verdict: Straightheads seems like a challenging attempt but comes across as to scared of any serious commitment to its brutal, provocative subject. Instead it will try to shock you with relentless, gruesome images but it's all just a sombre bore. It recalls visceral, nauseating power of Straw Dogs and Irreversible but is nowhere near as engaging, original or graphic.1.5/5

robert-connor An unpleasant woman and an equally unpleasant man are violently and horribly assaulted by a group of two-dimensional psycho thugs during a night-time encounter on a forest road in Shropshire, England. The man and woman who were assaulted plan and carry out a revenge attack on their attackers...Utterly repellent piece of voyeuristic trash, somehow masquerading as 'thought-provoking' drama, whilst actually coming across as sub-Michael Winner cr*p (you just know that Oliver Reed and Susan George would have been cast had it so easily have been made in the 1970s). What happens to Alice (Gillian Anderson) and Adam (Danny Dyer) is appalling and devastating, yet Dan Reed somehow manages to rub the viewer's nose in every last glob of its sexual nastiness. His camera lingers hungrily on Anderson's naked body both during and after the assault, whilst the script leaves almost all the characters floundering in a turgid sea of two dimensional cliché. His script forces his characters to behave in such a way as to alienate the viewer further from the 'victims' by shoving more ghastly situations into their faces (Adams's attempted post-incident assaults on both Sophie and Alice; Alice's assault on Heffer AFTER his suicide-attempt confession).The quandary comes from the central protagonists' performances - Dyer is a horrible actor, incapable of light and shade as the young male victim of the initial assault (he'll end up in Eastenders, mark my words), but Anderson is extraordinary. Even as the atrocious script forces her character to behave in depraved and ludicrous ways, she somehow delivers an extraordinarily compelling and complicated characterisation as a self-indulgent, arrogant hedonist who encounters such horrors and needs to retaliate.A vile and pointless film then, almost but not quite rescued by a compelling central female performance.

Claudio Carvalho After the installation of an alarm system by the twenty-three year old low-class Adam (Danny Dyer) in her fancy upper class apartment, the sophisticated owner Alice (Gillian Anderson) invites him to go with her in her boss' "opening house" boring party in the countryside. Adam dates Alice and has a dream night in the fashionable party inclusive having sex with her. While driving back home in a lonely cobblestone road in the middle of the night, Alice hits a moose and the couple parks the car to remove the wounded animal from the road. However, a van stops and a gang brutally assaults Adam and rapes Alice. One month later, Adam is impotent with Alice, has awful scars in his face and a blind eye and the traumatized Alice returns to her work. However, she is informed that her father has passed away and she travels back to the countryside to visit her father's home. While driving back home, she meets one of her rapist by chance and she discovers where he lives. Alice meets Adam and convinces him to come with her to take revenge against the violent man."Closure" is a weird movie, with a promising premise wasted in an awful and pointless screenplay. The story begins with an absolutely poor development of the lead characters: who is upper-middle class Alice; what is her profession; and how is her relationship the "alarm guy" Adam? I understand that they might have had a past since Alice has a suit that fits perfectly in Adam; otherwise she is simply a woman seeking for one night stand. In the story, Alice is a tough character seeking revenge while Adam is weak; however, the situation reverts in the end, and Adam's attitude is totally plausible and believable; but Alice seems to feel sorry and sympathy for the violent rapist and the whole plot becomes senseless and pointless. In my opinion, Dan Reed lost the opportunity to make a great revenge movie like, for example, Neil Jordan's "The Brave One" of the same year (2007) is. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): Not Available