My Son

'My Son' is an ok film for a one-time watch. It looks neat, McAvoy is consistently good, there are some tense scenes (although very dark), and the score is memorable.

Yet it's still 5/10 because the story is just too loose. More than half of the things they establish go nowhere while the resolution just turns up from nowhere. So many plot threads just get abandoned constantly taking you out of the film, there's nothing to grasp on to. It's ok to mislead your viewers if you do it in a clever way, provide hints, well, at least something. Here it's just random. Some of the scenes also felt stretched out to meet the required run-time, I have no other explanation, lots of walking, running, sitting, driving...

The ending credits also mention that this is an adaptation of Mon garçon, a French film of the same name from 2017. But how can it be an adaptation if it's directed by the same guy? It's like he just made the same film twice, and the first one isn't much better probably because it's rated even lower.

It's watchable, but only if there is nothing else to see.

My Son is an improvised child abduction thriller. It is a remake of a French movie called Mon Garçon.

Edmond Murray (James McAvoy) frequently works abroad a consultant for an oil company. His ex wife Joan (Claire Foy) calls him back to Scotland when Ethan his 7 year old son is snatched from a campsite.

Edmond suspects Joan's new boyfriend to be behind the abduction as he behave strangely. In fact Edmond beats him up and the police arrest him.

The man in charge of the investigation Inspector Roy (Gary Lewis) cannot find a substantial lead and is soon taken off the case. Edmond though does find a trail through some mobile phone footage. One that leads to a child abduction ring.

The movie has the scuzzy feel of 8MM with elements of Taken as Edmond is out to get revenge with whatever he can lay his hands on. A blowtorch in one scene.

The main selling point of My Son is that McAvoy had to improvise his script. He was only given a basic outline of his character and the plot. Although I presume he took a sneaky peak at the French version.

It does give the movie an underwritten feeling. Like the story is not fully developed and it shows in the final product.

... there's just not a lot in this film to become emotionally or intellectually intrigued... the two leads do a decent job with what they're given, but overall it's really nothing more than how most people are rating it.

For a movie that dragged in places the ending was a bit disappointing. Like they couldn't take a few minutes to really sus out everything that was really going on, just a quick de-brief in a car ride and no explanation of what happened with his job.

I wanted to love it so much, but I just couldn't. Claire is more than good, James is trying, as we know he wasn't given a script and he does what he can, but it clearly doesn't add anything to the movie. And there's a story, we've seen a few times before, nothing new under the Sun. Unfortunately, just another average movie.