Review of A Blast (2014) by Jan V — 06 Jun 2015

Title: Badly sequenced screenplay, back&forward flashing ad nausea. Hints to make us familiar with protagonists, are postponed until long after we've lost interest in their motives.

Saw this at the Rotterdam film festival 2015 (IFFR). Very well acted and shot overall, but the fragmentation and the continuous back- and forward-flashes deteriorate this movie. There were some compensations, however, for example Maria's impressive monolog in the support group, where she declared her life "ridiculous" in spite of all the things in her favor (healthy children, loving husband, etc). Her monolog explains what this movie is all about. For that reason it would have been much better when this scene had been moved to very early.

Also, the opening scene where someone drives through the dark woods while a radio reporter talks about woods deliberately set on fire, did not provide for any clues how it connected to the story at hand, and neither did subsequent scenes enlighten us in any way. Worse, we had to wait until the end for an explanation how this related to everything else. We get a few pieces of information that Maria is involved in an evil plan, being promised large sums of money before and after the "action", yet it all dangles in the air without becoming clear until the very end. This is far too late to make an enjoyable story which involves us in the protagonists and their motives.

Finally, also caused by a badly sequenced screenplay, is my opinion that the family relations that are the underlying cause of all the troubles, are not introduced properly, or their introductions are too late and too little. We can only reconstruct the true drama in hindsight, but I don't feel any inclination to see this movie twice. Maybe I'm old-fashioned and relying too much on a logical narrative. It's a pity, as all elements were present, but the order could be much better to include the viewer in the process.