Rent The Greatest (2009)

Grief + American saccharine = very average stuff - The Greatest review by RP

I rented this film because I'm trying to catch up with films with the rather excellent Carey Mulligan in them. I didn't know anything about the subject matter – if I had then perhaps I wouldn't have bothered. It's about grief and how different members of a family deal with it following the death of a loved one – the "greatest" of the title, the greatest son / brother / boyfriend. And while first time director Shana Feste has assembled a cast of excellent actors, the film suffers from a perhaps inevitable Hollywood saccharine sweetness that is at odds with the raw grief that such an event brings. I know, I've been there – and if you too have grieved you will recognise the emotions. But here, they are distorted through the lens of a US movie. Not a bad film – I've seen many worse – and the director even manages to get Pierce Brosnan to act a little, but there are too many unfinished or unbelievable bits (maths teacher with a huge suburban house + beach house? A girl who attends bereavement counselling sessions after pretending her sister has died? A mother who waits by the prison hospital bedside of driver who killed her son?). As far as my reason for renting the film: yes, Carey Mulligan was excellent – but the film is worth at best 3/5 stars. Very average stuff.