Answers to Nothing
A handful of wayward souls from Los Angeles cross paths against the backdrop of a missing-child investigation in this ensemble drama starring Dane Cook, Elizabeth Mitchell, Julie Benz, and Barbara Hershey.
Director: Matthew Leutwyler
Starring: Barbara Hershey, Dane Cook, Elizabeth Mitchell, Julie Benz, Zach Gilford
The interlocking stories are theoretically about people whose lives are associated; that worked in "Crash." Here the connections seem less immediate and significant, and so the movie sometimes seems based on a group of separate short stories.
Some fine performances and an embrace of understatement make Matthew Leutwyler's oddly titled Answers to Nothing a respectable entry in the multiple-stories-that-interlock genre.
"A Short Cuts" full of self-pitying sociopaths, Answers to Nothing follows its characters toward a succession of increasingly queasy conclusions it tries to pass off as heartfelt and human.
The result is a diligent brand of gloom. When it isn't being diligently gloomy, it's being obvious. When it isn't being obvious, it's being sneaky, and when it isn't being sneaky, it's marching toward a climax of B-movie violence, stupidity and nuttiness that summarily bumps off the movie's least annoying character.
None of what we see is at all credible.
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