LeonLouisRicci Dirty Southern White-Trash Poetry is what this, and quite a few other Movies, have attempted. Mostly they are hardly watchable in their disgusting display of them without soap. The better Film makers make up for it in edgy Character behavior and haunting story lines.This is mostly successful in drawing the Audience to the, again, well worn, Story of youthful entrapment in a nightmarish Homestead and then ramping it up with a run for your life intensity. All the Actors are fine and the quirky Script has some lines that can take you aback. But the pulse of the Movie is the chase and it isn't bogged down too much by Malick-Speak of turning phrases and whispering voice overs.There is a bit of that but the weakest part of the Film is the last twenty minutes and the Ending is a real letdown. But it is worth the journey even though it takes place in that most unattractive of places, the undertow of the stinky, stenched, South.

Targe It's rare when I can actually say I want my lost time back from this garbage. This film was so bad it's hard to find a place to start.We are 'treated' to a loser father who has dragged his weird boys into the countryside to raise pigs and live in their filth. One boy appears perfectly normal, yet the movie portrays him as a criminal. He breaks a window pane to get his g/f's attention and they send TWO squad cars after him, fishtailing up the gravel roads in true Dukes of Hazzard style. Pathetic, and AS IF. This was after the kid got a nail in a board stuck to his foot and then jumped in a river. Leave your believability at the door.His younger brother is worse, much worse. He goes around eating pig crap and paint and dirt and whatever he can stuff in his weird little mouth. By the middle of the movie we were laughing insults at 'Paint boy' and asking him to please shut up his voice-overs, which are endless, INANE, pointless! stupid, and completely ANNOYING, and go eat some nuclear waste and DIE for goddsake!Then we have the mysterious case of the loser father allowing his jail bird brother to stay with them, after apparently the murdering psycho KILLED THE DAD'S WIFE??!!?? This is never fully explained in the movie but heavily implied.Then he's surprised when the guy tries to steal his father's inherited coins, and instead of grabbing a shotgun, calmly just asks the guy to put them back... the idiocy and lack of believability in this movie is stunning.So obviously, which we saw 1/2 an hour ago and from 50,000 feet, he kills the dad. The stupid kids, instead of running IMMEDIATELY into the woods TO THE NEAREST POLICE STATION, try HIDING IN THEIR ROOM!!! OMG! This is worse than a grade-B slasher movie!!! Then when they do get away, ignoring dad's station wagon btw and choosing to run on foot, the killer psycho tracks them like some sort of demonic bloodhound, mysteriously always finding them again.In the final scene, instead of running away, the older kid mysteriously decides to commit suicide by challenging the fully grown man WHO IS ARMED WITH A KNIFE to a wrestling match in a nearby slough. Predictably the kid is quickly drowned, but somehow, mysteriously, manages to plunge the guy's knife into the guy while under water, and oh yeah, BEING DROWNED.Thank god they cut out the part where annoying PAINT BOY comes back and calmly sits down beside the psycho who just drowned his brother, and oh, talks about crap and annoying bs while the guy dies.What a complete TRAIN WRECK of a movie, thank the GODS I borrowed this off my girlfriend's sister and did not have to pay a DIME to watch it. I STILL feel ripped off from my WASTED TIME though.

MBunge This movie would not end. It just kept going on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. I began to wish that my house would catch fire so I would have an excuse to stop watching it.This interminable tale starts out with John Munn (Dermot Mulroney) and his two sons. Chris (Jaime Bell) is a teenage delinquent with a crush on a neighbor girl. Tim (Devon Alan) is the brainy kid brother with a 1970s era Bee Gees haircut who makes himself sick by eating any appalling garbage he can get his hands on. They live out in the sticks and don't interact much with the rest of the world. Then John's brother Deel (Josh Lucas) shows up. Deel has gotten out of prison and is looking for work. John asks him to stay and help look after his boys. Deel agrees, but the reason he's really there is to find the old coins their father had. He finds the coins, things go terribly wrong and the rest of the movie involves Chris, Tim and Deel wandering aimlessly and pointlessly through the countryside in one of the most boring stretches of film I've ever seen or even imagined.There are so many scenes in Undertow that are so dumb and so purposeless they could only exist to stretch this story out to legitimate movie-length. We get to watch John Munn eat cake! We get to see him smoke a pipe! We get to listen to Tim prattle on about chiggers! We observe Chris and Tim performing chores for a black couple! And we also get to experience the slowest speed chase in the history of anyone chasing anybody! I am not exaggerating when I say that 90% of the second half of this film is useless crud. It serves no function within the story and it has no greater thematic or emotional significance for the audience.Compounding the awesome lack of meaning and direction in this story is that these characters talk about their emotions like they're guests on the Dr. Phil show. These people are portrayed as unsophisticated country folk, yet they speak as though they've been in therapy since they were born. There is nothing in this story that is left under the surface. Every last, little, possible nuance or subtlety is just splayed out in front of the audience, as though the filmmakers were worried that this film might be a bit too smart for people. It ain't.Josh Lucas is the only actor who manages to give an even halfway decent performance, and he's stuck with a character who stops making sense halfway through the film. Mulroney and his two young co-stars are just stiffs. Though to be fair, it's not like the story is asking them for more and they fail to deliver. The characters are just blocks of wood, so I suppose their uninspired work may have been a case of good acting in crappy roles.Finally, there's a lot of inexplicably arty direction going on here. Something will happen and that image will be repeated again and again. The film will flash to negative for a second or the image will freeze while we still hear people talking. Slow motion is used, not for some important moment in the story, but for a homeless chick walking. That's all she was doing. Walking. And they put her in slow-mo! None of these fancy tricks mean anything to the story or to how the audience is supposed to perceive it. I think the director simply thought they looked really cool. He was wrong.Undertow starts out like it's a "family coming together" movie, runs into a big moment of melodrama and then mutates into this ponderous, tiring, idiotic drool. I can understand why someone may have thought the first half of this film was worth making. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what went wrong with the second half.

callanvass Undertow was a film that passed me by many years ago,however I was in the video store the other day and it caught my eye,needless to say the plot looked interesting,so I picked it up. Between the country side atmosphere that's so rich you can almost taste it,to the gripping suspense,I knew I was in for something great. Undertow is like a surreal world only it takes place in the Country,showing off a close but disoriented family,who have gone through quite a bit in there lives. Chris our lead hero is a troublesome,yet likable fellow who always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,gunning for affection from his dad and of course girl troubles. Tim his younger brother has an illness,with a strange taste for things like Paint,etc. They all have there unusual attributes,but they are all perfectly developed. I love a film with slow building tension,it just makes the payoff that much better,and this film didn't disappoint in that regard. Things really started to heat up when Uncle Deel came into the picture. He's naturally restrained at the start of the film,we know nothing about him,don't really have the urge to,and slowly but surely what we find out becomes truly unsettling.Undertow proves you don't need a big budget to provide excellent suspense. Unlike a lot of big budgeted suspense oriented films,Undertow Doesen't become stagnant at the worst possible times,it has the perfect flow. Everyone was absolutely fabulous,however one of the biggest reasons this film is as good as it is,has to be the wonderful chemistry between Jamie Bell|Chris| and Devon Alan|Tim|. We care about them,root for them,and most importantly we want them to get revenge on Uncle Deel|Josh Lucas|. Undertow is just a breath of fresh air,it's inventive,suspenseful and downright delightful.Performances. Jamie Bell is magnificent as Chris. I haven't seen a performance from an actor of his age to be that good,in some time. Without the proper writing,his character could've easily been a one dimensional mouthy prick type part who becomes likable. Luckily for us, Joe Conway avoids that cliché and gives us a hero to love. We can sense his fear and his pain,however what makes him as great as he is was he didn't buckle under pressure,I was rooting for him all the way. Devon Alan has to be the perfect kid actor. He put his all into this film,he wasn't one of those kid actors looking to say "Hi Mom look at me I'm on TV" No...he was the real deal. He was truly fascinating to watch,he actually made me care about him and for a kid actor his age,that's a tough feat to pull off. Josh Lucas is absolutely frightening as Uncle Deel. He's consistently unsettling,unpredictable and most importantly disturbing. The scary thing is he's able to be charming while being a greedy sociopath. Believe me when I say this you won't be able to get his performance out of your head. Dermot Mulroney is unexpectedly pretty good as the Father. He was sympathetic without overdoing it,I enjoyed him. Kristen Stewart Doesen't really have a noteworthy role,or anything of that sort,but she was cute as a button and played her role well.Bottom Line-Undertow is one of the most delightful surprises I have seen in quite a while. It's nice to watch a film not knowing what's gonna happen during any point in the duration of the film. Simply put it's a rich atmospheric treat that you all should indulge in,you won't be ashamed i'm sure!.9/10