Review of Violet & Daisy (2011) by Thomas W — 23 Jan 2014

Late actor James Gandolfini ('The Sopranos', Enough Said) co-stars in Violet & Daisy in one of his last roles onscreen in this rather lite but highly stylish shoot-em up starring Alexis Bledel ('Gilmore Girls', Tuck Everlasting) and Saoirse Ronan (Atonement, Hanna) as contracted, teenage hit-girls whose latest target/assignment marked for death is the lonely and abandoned father figure played by a quiet and kind Gandolfini .

.. who bakes cookies. Much of the film feels as if it is going for style over substance as Tarantino-esque flourishes are peppered throughout the film as bullets are strewn across screen and the assassins poetically move across our screens as angels of death dispatching bad people to other worlds.

When the girls stumble upon Gandolfini's mark, they have somehow run out of bullets and are unable to finish him off (or even hit him once) ... which lends time to his life and their time in his where he reminisces of his time spent with his young daughter whom he hasn't seen in years because of a fault he had committed years prior.

As Bledel's Violet goes in search of more ammunition, Daisy is left to watch over their victim (and keep a man not wanting to escape from escaping). It is the scenes between Gandolfini and Ronan that give the film the smallish-elements of meaning and required me to rewatch portions to make sure I came away with the right feelings in regards to the film.

I think the film can easily be seen as a mess about gun-toting/materialistic/vapid teenagers but I believe there is something more here. There are some stunningly beautiful and surreal dreamscapes that possibly lend meaning to what is actually happening onscreen; but as a small drama - forget the bullets - about a father and a orphaned girl .

.. Violet & Daisy has something. It is unfortunate that the biggest portion of the film doesn't fully work because there are scenes here I would love to recommend.