The Gateway

Was it a good movie? No.

Was it a bad movie? Yes.

Did I run out of everything else to watch? Yup.

Did I already see it once and totally forgot? Seems likely.

I just watched it for the name brand actors hoping it wasn't terrible. I would normally can a movie like this right after the first fishbowl shot but I dragged my ass through it and was entertained by all the trashyness.

Not going to win any friends with this butt-salad.

Another one of these low budget, small scale thrillers that fails to do much with a half-hearted premise. This one has a lot of characters but is in the main based around a father being released from jail and bringing crime into the life of his wife and daughter. As usual for this genre, they amass some top actors in support including Keith David and Bruce Dern, and Shea Whigham is reliably great. But it's very hard to get too excited about something so run of the mill.

B movie, mediocre even by network tv standards, with an A list group of actors, maybe drawn to this project by its truly noble attempt to protect children from the idiotic behavior of the adults around them.

But, ends up Jjust a predictable, excruciatingly slow paced film.....We see all the punches coming way too far in advance; like a spiraling, slow motion plane crash....

This film tells the story of a social worker who helps a family in unexpected ways. I find the story a bit confusing, so I couldn't really get into the story.

I had never heard about the 2021 thriller "The Gateway" from writers Alex Felix Bendaña, Andrew Levitas and Michele Civetta prior to sitting down and watching it here in 2022. All I knew about it was the fact that the movie Olivia Munn and Frank Grillo on the cast list.

The storyline was actually enjoyable. Sure, it wasn't the most innovative or creative of plot concepts, but the storyline made for good entertainment, and that is what matters to me when I sit down and watch a movie. So the writers definitely put together something that worked here in "The Gateway".

The narrative was adequately paced, some slow moments and some fast moments throughout the course of the movie, so it was a pretty nice enough movie experience.

"The Gateway" does have a good cast ensemble. I am not overly familiar with Shea Whigham, but he did perform quite well in this movie, despite of having just a single grimace to put on in every single scene. So there was lacking a bit of facial expressions of emotions and such, but it seemed okay to the character, given the backstory and addiction to alcohol. Olivia Munn was definitely nicely cast and performed quite well, and it was nice to see Bruce Dern in the movie. It was a shame that Frank Grillo only had a small role in the movie, as he could have spruced it up quite a lot. Zach Avery definitely put on a noteworthy performance here.

All in all then "The Gateway" was a good movie. I was definitely entertained by it.

My rating of director Michele Civetta's 2021 movie "The Gateway" lands on a six out of ten stars.