Review of The Bling Ring (2013) by Jacob G — 11 Mar 2014

I came for Emma Watson, but enjoyed because of Katie Chang and Israel Broussard, who make an interesting 1-2 punch for the rest of the characters to drift through.

There is a certain detached quality to The Bling Ring and, even at a simple 90 minutes, feels too long. Deeper characters would have helped provide meat to keep the momentum going. Don't know if that just wasn't what Coppola envisioned for her based-on-a-true-story thing, or if they didn't have enough sources to nail the characters in an ideal, technicolor way.

Of course, that shouldn't have stopped them considering that based-on-a-true-story means everything is wrong. They could have just taken liberties and ran with it. C'est la vie.

Regardless, there's something morbidly interesting about viewing a movie like this. Because while few of us will ever put ourselves in a position to do a robbery, let alone a full-on home invasion, the one thing that gets communicated very well is the type of friendships that could result in such a decision.