"The sea keeps things in perspective, which is easy to lose."

Year: 2003

Director: John Mackenzie 

Writers: Desmond Lowden (book), Timothy Prager

The workaholic head of the compliance section of a New York bank flies to Monaco to investigate unusual deposits from an offshore bank and meets a down-on-his-luck international film star who has become embroiled in criminal activities.

- Anonymous

I mostly wanted to see this movie, because it was a thriller and because of Michael Keaton. 

I've only seen Keaton in two action movies (Batman, Batman Returns), a fantasy comedy (Beetlejuice) and a drama (Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)). Did this movie give something new from Keaton I didn't already know about? No. This definitely was just a mediocre performance from Michael Keaton. He can definitely do much better. I also very much like Michael Caine, but his character seemed sort of useless. I don't know why his name is mentioned second, he hardly did anything compared Judith Godréche, who did do a good job, though I haven't seen her in any other movie, so I don't exactly know what kind of performances she usually gives.

First thing I noticed, again, was the music. Considering this movie came out in 2003, the music seemed a bit odd. It was more like music in the thrillers of 1980s, 1990s. It vaguely reminded me of the music in Manhunter. The movie wasn't exactly distracting, but I would've gone to another direction with the film score.

The story of Quicksand wasn't extremely original. The fact that a man who has no history of any kind of crimes or action (though that was left kind of vague) is suddenly in the middle of a total chaos, and is framed for a murder, etcetera. That part is nothing new. But I don't know if I've ever seen a movie where the main character of an action movie would be a banker. Still, banker or not, the main character is a 30-50-year-old straight white man, so that is absolutely nothing new. In short, Quicksand isn't offering anything new, original or tremendously exciting to the audience.

Quicksand was too awfully graphic. The violence and blood wasn't exactly too graphic, except for few parts, but mostly I'm talking about a few rape scenes. You can't exactly see too much, but usually even remotely graphic rape scenes are extremely tasteless, and of course might be really horrifying to the most sensitive audience and rape survivors, which is why I'd recommend to avoid this movie, if you tend to get really uncomfortable and triggered by rape. But luckily this movie didn't have way too graphic rape scene that would've lasted like way too long. It was short, but it's enough to make you uncomfortable.

I really don't know what to say about this film. I don't know if I should even recommend it to anyone. I mean it's not really bad, but it brings nothing to the table. This movie sort of reminded me of why I've been avoiding thrillers, even though I sort of love them: thrillers are repeated, and there are very few thrillers that are original and actually very exciting. My honest opinion? If you want thriller, stick with Silence Of The Lambs, it never lets you down.

☆☆☆

3 / 10