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Reviews
Boomtown (2017)
Frustrating
This is the third time I've seen this film, and purchased it mainly to support indie films. The story takes place in small town midwest America which is a location that I believe is criminally underused in the industry, so I was initially very hopeful for this movie. The themes of isolation, poverty, struggling to make ends meet while caring for a family, can easily be explored in a film like this. Unfortunately, the movie tries to hit all of them in a short period of time, and never really goes deep into any of them. While you're watching, you can almost feel the story begging to dive deep into some of these themes and it just never happens which makes it feel incredibly frustrating.
Spoilers ahead: To give an example, there's a big buildup of the main character cheating on his wife. It becomes clear it's going to happen, and I was interested how deeply they'd go with his infidelity, how it would effect him, his work, would his wife found out etc. But they sleep with each other once about halfway through the runtime and boom she is gone from the rest of the movie. It's never even mentioned again. This is how every topic the movie hits on goes and it's really really unfortunate. What's more bizarre, is that the director has plenty of quiet still shots where nothing really happens, which is normally fine, but it seems like we swapped story depth for these empty shots. I'd give this a generous 6/10 just with how much potential there is here. Acting is average at best, setting and mood are great.