Review of Misconduct (2016) by Jamie C — 09 Apr 2016

Terribly poor, badly directed and quite boring, Misconduct is a painful to see corporate-legal thriller. Messy beyond all expectations this is almost a shameless attempt to borrow the script of the 1990's classic starring Harrison Ford Presumed Innocent.

Ben (Josh Duhamel) is a young and ambitious lawyer whose marriage issues do not stop him from picking up a potential big case that would put him in the middle of an old fight between the CEO of a huge pharmaceutical company (sir Anthony Hopkins) and the senior partner of his legal firm (Al Pacino). While digging up in the information, Ben gets unwillingly involved in a sort of deadly love triangle in which he becomes the primary suspect and the most wanted in New Orleans. In order to prove his innocence he has to uncover the whole truth and that will have certain consequences for all involved.

Described like that, the story does not seem so bad, but unfortunately it is so messy, so boring and so ridiculously inconsistent with its attempt to develop multiple sub-plot lines, that one would be simply annoyed with the movie. Pacing is sloppy, camera work is far from being at satisfying level, too many elements are brought together in a something that resembles a total mess. Actually, at one point I was asking myself how it was possible for director Shintaro Shimosawa to create such a disastrously bad movie. Especially with the presence of two of the most acclaimed Hollywood heavyweights such as Anthony Hopkins and Al Pacino. Usually they are so good that they could bring a movie from being bad to at least mediocre (or even sometimes passable), but this time even their presence cannot help Misconduct. That leads to another logical question of: how come that these two great actors accepted to start in this terrible movie? Indeed, both of them deliver several typical Anthony Hopkins or Al Pacino scenes, but this is definitely not enough to make the movie better.

In conclusion, my advice about Misconduct could be summarized in five words: do not waste your time.