I have always wondered if a movie could possibly out slick itself. And now, because of 2:22, I know the answer, definitively. Yup. Without a shadow of a doubt I have my answer. But we will get to that. And in a first at THinc. I will be coming to you to help ME understand this movie. Generally I am the one that acts like a know it all, and profess to the world at large how each and every movie I review here works. But this time it will be different. So if you think you know how 2:22 works, I’ll be looking to you to talk me through it.
Our mind job attempt du jour, is the movie 2:22. Awful name aside, this is a very very slick movie. And it is really really quite good. Fantastic really. 2:22 is about Dylan, played by Michiel Huisman (Which we know most clearly here at THinc. from the movie The Invitation but he also has played in The Game of Thrones, Age of Adaline, Orphan Black, etc) a young, good looking, uncommitted, air traffic controller and his ability to see patterns where there are none. Which is great, because otherwise he met kill 900 people in a split second. Which is exactly what happens, and Dylan finds himself suspended from his job. But there is something rotten in Denmark here. Something is wrong with Dylan or there is something wrong with the world at large.
Quick Overview of the movie 2:22
Let’s be 100% clear. I want to be Dylan. Completely. I want all of his life. I want his shower, his loft, his cool bicycle and his commute. I want his penchant for a cup of coffee and an apple each morning. I want his job as an air traffic controller and I want to throw the finished flights in the bin with the same flair and panache that Dylan does it with. But something happens to poor Dylan in Grand Central Station one day and now his mind just isn’t all there anymore. Something is wrong.
But soon Dylan meets Sarah (played by Teresa Palmer, which played in I Am Number Four, Hacksaw Ridge, Triple Nine, etc) an art dealer manager who happens to be recently separated from the gallery’s chief artist. Soon Dylan and Sarah are having a relationship that can only be found in movies and books (oh wait) that is too perfect for it’s own good. But Dylan can’t focus too much on this new girl in his life because he’s becoming extraordinarily obsessed with the uncanny coincidences that have begun repeating themselves throughout his day.
Dylan start sketching out the coincidences on the windows of his too cool for his own good New York loft. And if you know anything about me at all, drawing on windows is a fetish of mine. Seriously. At work I askew whiteboards for windows all day long. So man, I am crushing hard on this Dylan character. Hahaha. And Dylan is so thoroughly twisted around the axel around these coincidences that he comes completely unglued when he goes to the art show that Sarah asked him to come to at her art gallery. You see, because Jonas, (I am not making these names up people… Jonas, Dylan, Sarah, just screams Twilight wannabe… I’m sorry.) who is Sarah’s ex, and artist, has a penchant for Grand Central Station… which is the center of where all these “coincidences” started happening.
So OBVIOUSLY, Dylan tries to beat up Jonas. And Jonas turns into a werewolf, and Dylan shows himself as a vampire. Oh wait. Sorry. Different movie. But they do fight, and Sarah kicks Dylan out of the art gallery and doesn’t see him again for another 30 minutes of the movie. Thank goodness. Because now Dylan can get really wrapped around the axel and list out every single coincidence that happens every day. And he can also find letters between two murdered lovers from 30 years prior. And you know what? It looks like they mirror the story of himself, Sarah, and Jonas. I know, HUH?!? But what’s really bad? They all end up dead… and it seems that these patterns are all leading up to that inevitable ending, UNLESS DYLAN CAN FIGURE OUT THE PATTERN! (I think anyway… but you are definitely going to have to validate this assumption on my part for me.)
Eventually (eventually is a fantastic word that literally means… “Skip a bit brother.”) Jonas decides he is going to take Sarah off to the country to get away from Dylan and this craziness. Sarah consents. But their flight is cancelled… which points them back to Grand Central Station! At 2:22! Meanwhile Dylan is racing his way there because he knows he’s about to die if he gets there.
Wait. WHAT?
So he evades cops. He runs across cars. He is the Last Action Hero. And he makes it in time. And as he arrives he starts to use his knowledge of the individual people that would be there in the station as cover. There are the school children. There is the pregnant woman. But then he heads directly to Sarah. And Jonas, having just purchased his ticket is heading towards the couple and ooooh. IS he HANGRY. So much so, he pulls a gun out. And shoots Dylan. BUT! Dylan, the clever guy! He didn’t bring a gun like his predecessor did. And so as he bleeds and bleeds, Sarah screams, and then all the cops arrive and riddle Jonas with bullets. Thus breaking the chain of the trio getting murdered.
Wait. WHAT?
2:22 Movie Explained Conclusions
I love dismantling movies. I love thinking about them. I love dissecting the logic and rearranging the pieces to put them back together again. I have even rebuilt and explained the most difficult movie to understand ever, Primer. But this one? No idea. I can’t help you … like any at all.
I can tell you what I would have done to logically fix this movie and help it hold water. But I can’t tell you what this particular movie even is TRYING to accomplish. Personally, I would have utilized the knowledge that Dylan learned through his flashbacks to beat Jonas. The popping lights, could have been used to out maneuver him. The school children to surprise him. The flash forwards to know where Jonas would be so he could outmaneuver him or something. Or, better yet? Allowed him to have bullet time abilities in effect. The ability to know where he would shoot, and where to move Sarah, and then to also get out of the way.
But instead, his big reveal is to not bring a gun? To not escalate? Is that what the movie was saying. Don’t up the ante on the crazy? Allow the cops to intervene. NOOOO! I think I understand?!? Did Dylan go out of his way to be chased by the cops in order to bring them into Grand Central so that when he got shot, they would be able to return fire on his behalf? Is that what he did?!?
Oh noooo. Because that whole scene was busted. We see Dylan all but shot, and caught by the cops running towards Grand Central. And then like 4 minutes later… not making that up, the clock minute movement is a big part of the movie because everything happens during 2:22 (thus the movie title! See! You guys are wit me here!) But it is illogical. And if that is the solution I’m angrier than if there wasn’t any solution, it was just dumb luck!
Please Explain This Movie To Me
Ok, so I was actually quite impressed with the special effects of this movie. The intro air traffic controller scenes were very well done from a CGI standpoint (if entirely pointless to the movie.) The 2:22 sections were gorgeously laid out. The art in the gallery was fantastic. It was a gorgeous movie. Really. Very impressed actually. But the acting was cardboard thin. The character relationships were awful. The escalations were so bad that they didn’t make sense. But man, I wanted this ending to pull it off for me. And there just wasn’t anything there. The build up of Dylan staring at his windows scribblings in order to make sense of it was literally 50% of this movie. And yet, it wasn’t there. Nothing was there. It didn’t matter. The dog barking. The jack hammer hammering. None of it mattered. Unless… that is, I missed something. Which, with this movie? Entirely possible. I was so busy staring at my new coveted life which Dylan was leaving me out of, I’m sure I missed tons of obvious things.
Which is where you come in. Do me a favor and explain it to me. PUH-lease!