Movies Reviews

Trust – Movie Review

By Ron Wilkinson Apr 11, 2011, 12:40 GMT

The parents of a 14-year-old girl discover she has been victimized by an adult posing as a teenager on a chat room. ...more

A story of sexual predation that evolves into a psychological thriller. Predictable but well done.

New director David Schwimmer continues to find new ways to spend the money he accumulated by virtue of his part in the galactic smash TV series “Friends.” He wants to direct, so he directs. He started directing with the hip comedy, “Run, Fatboy, Run” starring Simon Pegg which ran nowhere but downhill. He has followed that up with this semi-percolating sexual drama about a teenager who is victimized by an Internet predator more than twice her age.

Say what you will about his directing, Schwimmer has chops when it comes to connections. He started with his old friend Andy Bellin (“Poker Nation”) as screenwriter and added Robert Festinger somewhere along the way. There is no way to tell how much Festinger added but the film certainly bears the mark of his work on “In the Bedroom,” the Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek and Nick Stahl powerhouse sexual drama of 2001.

He also knows about this subject matter. As a member of the Board of Directors of the Rape Foundation in Santa Monica, California, he heard a speaker recount a story similar to this. Schwimmer was able to direct this film with firsthand knowledge, whether he liked it or not.

In casting for “Trust,” Schwimmer and the film’s producers (including producer legend Michael Greenhut---“Annie Hall”) pulled some strings and reeled in Clive Owen and Catherine Keener to do the heavy lifting for the film. Owen and Keener play Will and Lynn Cameron, the parents of victim Annie Cameron (a great performance by 15-year-old Liana Liberato).

TV actor Jason Clarke puts out a corker of a performance as the sleaziest Internet predator you have ever seen - a small but crucial part in leveraging the performances of Owen, Keener and Liberato. It is mainly through the audience’s fear and hatred of middle-aged online sickie Doug Tate that the rest of the performances are launched over the top.

The film is a cautionary tale, a good-hearted attempt to use the power of the silver screen to do the right thing. Unfortunately, the right thing in this case tells a dull and predictable story. The girl goes online, falls for a middle-aged weasel and goes to bed with him. Amazingly enough, she goes to bed with him after she meets him and realizes he is old enough to be her dad. Apparently, one of the lessons of the film is that this happens more often than we would like to believe.

The most intense part of the film starts after the debacle. Annie’s father Will (Owen) becomes increasingly unhinged to the point of becoming a stalker himself. The screenplay does a great job of showing the reverberations of sexual abuse between the members of the victim’s family. The resulting psychosis is powerful and unfathomable.

Lynn (Keener) is pushed to the limit to keep Will from ending up in the nuthouse, although she too feels the crushing weight of injustice on her shoulders. The victim, Annie, drops deeply into denial and is in danger of never coming out.

In the end, the film tells it like it is by refusing to succumb to simple solutions. Nothing is ever wrapped up with perfect closure when this kind of event happens in real life and the screenplay echoes that reality. Life goes on but nobody is quite the same.

The down side of this even-handed treatment is that the viewer is not sure where to go from there. We, and our children, are on the Internet every day. To reject the Internet is to become a hermit in the context of normal American life. To pretend that we can somehow preach our teenagers into an awareness of danger is folly.

To the extent that teenagers watch this film, especially with parents, there is a great message to be conveyed here. Unfortunately, this is likely to take a distant second place after the fantasy animation action film in the teenage demographic.

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Directed by: David Schwimmer
Written by: Andy Bellin, Robert Festinger
Starring: Clive Owen, Catherine Keener and Jason Clarke 
 Release Date: April 1, 2011
MPAA: Rated R for disturbing material involving the rape of a teen, language, sexual content and some violence
Runtime: 106 minutes
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color