MovieChat Forums > Reclaim (2014) Discussion > My Gripe with this movie

My Gripe with this movie

posted 9 years ago by tarzbar
6 replies | jump to latest

I actually didn't mind the premise of this movie, and felt there was some solid acting, however I do have some gripes.

1. I can ignore the fact Steven's character didn't use the shotgun while being chased in the Jeep, as the movie sets these family's characters up to be good Samaritans that have never don't anything wrong and violence isn't in there nature etc.

What I felt this movie completely lacked was a connection between their adoptee daughter and parents. I felt like they were chasing to find her because she was a little girl caught up in this scam, however I felt no connection as their parents towards her as their daughter. What irked me more is Nina holding the gun at them for that few mins at the end, and they try to talk her down. That scene was not necessary.

What I think would have made the movie better if they had focused more on the bonding between parents and daughter, and even a couple scenes where Nina tries to tell them something is up or even "I'm scared people may take me away from you" scene setup etc.

Instead, we have a little girl that is surrounded by bad people and she plays along thinking it's a game. I know, I know, she's a kid but she knows these people aren't her parents. She also knows she has played this several times before. It would have been better if the scene between Nina and John Cusack's character was him saying something along the lines of "we have found some new parents for you, hopefully they don't return you like the last few". The way it played out made me think the kid was just as bad.

They didn't make her desperate to want to find a good family. She seemed content playing the game of setting up families. I felt no real connection of Nina wanting Shannon and Steven to be the last people she does this too, or wanting to end up with them. In fact, the only scenes where Nina showed any real interest to them as her parents is when John Cusack's character put a gun to Shannon and Nina yelled no... Only to pull a gun on Shannon and Steven not even five minutes later.

[–] tarzbar 9 years ago

Ugh! Please ignore my terrible grammar and layout. I'm typing on my phone and it won't let me scroll up to check what I've written

[–] rpressley 9 years ago

I agree

[–] cprattville 7 years ago

I also agree, it's terrible grammar and layout. :-)

[–] pennilayne 9 years ago

Totally agree. I really liked this film, except I was thinking the same thing. "How would the kid not somehow let it slip that this has happened before?" and I wished they had more bonding scenes and also honestly casted a different child actress. That was also a huge issue in the connection/chemistry because she wasn't a very warm, charismatic little child actor. I get that being in a tragedy like that you aren't going to be all happy and extroverted and meeting new parents you're not immediately going to be warm to them. But the actress was very stiff. They needed an actress with more emotional range so that once they did bond, you felt the bond. With that actress it was kind of a lost cause. And I was thinking the same thing about how would the kids not let it slip and say things like "Are you gonna me and not get rid of me" or "the last ones were meaner, or nicer" stuff like that. Any little kind of thing. Kids let it slip. They are kids. But then when she said "What happens to Nina?" I thought ohhh ok, maybe they just kill the kids, and what he meant by move on to the next victim was grab a different kid, get rid of or kill the last kid, so its a new kid every time and thats why they never say anything" So that calmed the issue in my head but then John Cusacks character said the thing about the game and I was like wait?? So what im thinking is maybe the way its supposed to go down is because at the end it said child trafficking happens all the time and the children are invisible and missing. Maybe they do get murdered, but his character was money hungry and she said she had a new job, and he still had Nina, so he was just gonna use her again (after killing the main lady cause she shorted him) And was gonna go about it differently. So maybe Nina had never actually been through it before? Not sure but that did bother me as well and it bothered me that I felt the couple had a strong bond but the bond with the kid fell short.

[–] balducci2 8 years ago

"And I was thinking the same thing about how would the kids not let it slip and say things like "Are you gonna me and not get rid of me" or "the last ones were meaner, or nicer" stuff like that."

The child spoke French and the couple spoke English. They could barely communicate with one another, except for a few simple words like 'house' (maison) and 'room' (chambre). We saw this when they were showing her the photo album on the bed the night they adopted her.

When the husband was unable to communicate with Nina on the beach about doing a cartwheel, he asked his wife for help and she said she barely had high school level French herself.

So they had zero chance of being able to have a conversation about previous adoptive parents etc.

[–] Wuchak (8110) 3 years ago

What I think would have made the movie better if they had focused more on the bonding between parents and daughter

They had enough bonding scenes; any more and it would've dragged the story down.

As far as Nina's lack of communicating her troubling situation, (1) she likely would have done so if she was with the couple for a longer time period; as it was, it was only a couple of days; and (2) as someone else pointed out in this thread, Nina didn't speak French, so there was a communication problem, which only time could resolve and a couple days wasn't enough.

What irked me more is Nina holding the gun at them for that few mins at the end, and they try to talk her down. That scene was not necessary.

That scene was a bit eye-rolling and could've been better executed. Yet I think the writers were trying to show how a little girl like that would be confused in such a situation since she wouldn't have properly understood her former-guardians' criminality, not to mention the crazy life-or-death event she had just experienced. So she was understandably confused, not to mention she was likely mimicking what she saw the grown-ups do (point the gun at others; bearing in mind that she probably didn't even know how to shoot it).