Review of Twelve (2010) by Oneniggo — 17 Nov 2019

With his 2010 film adaption of Nick McDonell’s Twelve, Joel Schumacher created a disaster fortunately not too many people had to endure as it only brought in half its budget of five million dollars. But why? While not being perfect, the novel is theoretically ideally suited for a motion picture: On the one hand, it creates a unique atmosphere by dealing with drugs, sex and violence among wealthy teenagers from Manhattan’s Upper East Side. On the other hand, the plot is not too complicated to be told in two hours by means of leaving out several passages. But this challenges the creators to transmit their messages with all ways cinematography is able to, which is exactly what Schumacher and his film team failed at.

So I’m afraid we cannot really begin with the good but at least there are some aspects that are done ordinarily. Steven Fierberg’s camera work is okay and captures the scenes as it’s supposed to as well as the music by Harry Gregson-Williams is provided as a background. Though, both miss the chance to add some actual finesse to the film.

Most the time the sound also doesn’t attract any attention but at the final party the music is way too loud. As a consequence, you can hardly understand the dialogues there.

There are many characters, which often confused me during my reading, so I think this might be even worse when firstly watching the denser film. Most actors did a good job but of all Chace Crawford as the drug dealer White Mike having the most important role was one of the worst choices. Even the narrator in the film, whose annoying presence will be discussed later, describes him as „pale“, „all white“ and as a very scary person which his performance definitely isn’t. This calm, brown-haired guy can’t be White Mike. Nevertheless, Crawford doesn’t play terribly but he wasn’t the right choice.

All this still doesn’t make the film really bad. The problem is Jordan Melamed’s screenplay and the way Joel Schumacher put it in practice. Maybe they didn’t want to make a film only watched in winter or it was less expensive but that doesn’t justify at all removing the snowy setting the novel uses to create its cold, harassed, uncomfortable atmosphere. Besides, the party Chris throws for Upper East Side queen Sara Ludlow is at New Year’s Eve which enhances its significance. However, the most important problem is the narrator. It’s totally okay to introduce the characters and the setting by a narrator. Although there are better methods, it is better than just putting a text in the beginning, which even blockbusters like Star Wars do. But in Twelve, everything is told by the narrator. Why should you bother with a cinematic production when you can just read out entire text passages and use some meaningless footage to form the background? Apart from laziness, Schumacher probably tried to evade an R-rating which he didn’t even achieve. This can be supported by the fact that Chris’ aggressive brother Claude doesn’t buy a submachine Uzi gun in the film and the final scene is much less brutal than in the novel and owing to the music also less dramatic. This removes the shock effect from the book ending which is definitely questionable but despite the fact that Schumacher extended the end of the film, he cannot really persuade to have the better one.

On top of that, what is the worst way to tell a fictional crime? Yes, the mystery of the murder is solved right in the beginning.

Oh, have you already forgotten about the narrator? You won’t during the film. He explains nearly every scene and is the most annoying aspect of all. The voice sounds like the voice-over of a private TV documentary and is even worse in the German synchronization.