Review of August: Osage County (2013) by Richard D — 26 Feb 2015

I can't say that this film originally interested me much ... until I realized that it was an adaptation of a Tracy Letts play adapted by Letts himself. I'm an extremely big fan of "Bug" and "Killer Joe", so suddenly a Southern Gothic melodrama starts to sound a whole lot better.

This is great material, well-adapted turned into a pretty good film, with some notable reservations. The central cast of this film does a great job. I'm not the biggest Meryl Streep fan, but she dominates this film and holds all the other characters in her orbit.

Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Margo Martindale and Sam Shepherd all hold their own to one degree or another and add to film. Ewan McGregor and Benedict Cumberbatch play far against type and struggle with American accents and generally feel like the film would have been better off without them.

Juliette Lewis does nothing to convince me she was ever a passable actress. John Wells's direction really lets the material down. He never manages to stage anything in a more interesting way than your standard network TV drama.

I like the film, and think it's worth seeing if you love melodrama, but it could have been so much more.