'The Desperate Hour' Review

Arlington TX

26 February, 2022

2:44 PM

Description

By Joe Friar, Fort Worth Report February 26, 2022 The premise of one actor on the phone for 90 minutes can be thrilling if done correctly. Jake Gyllenhaal captured our attention as a 911 operator in "The Guilty" while Tom Hardy managed to keep audiences in suspense by placing 36 phone calls while driving in "Locke." In "The Desperate Hour" (formerly titled "Lakewood") Naomi Watts is stranded in the middle of the woods with her iPhone while a shooting takes place at her son's high school. She franticly places one call after another while attempting to run 5 miles towards the school. Watts is first-rate however the storyline becomes cliched and the film tedious as it runs out of steam. Watts plays recently widowed Amy Carr who lost her husband a year ago. She's a single mom raising a young daughter and a teenage son named Noah (Colton Gobbo) who took his father's death hard. On the morning of the story, he lies in bed unmotivated to go to school. After giving her son a quick prodding, Amy heads out the door for a morning run into the woods and thus begins the one-woman show. Directed by Philip Noyce who helmed the Harrison Ford action films "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger" and written by Chris Sparling who has experience with the one-person premise after delivering the Ryan Reynolds thriller "Buried," the ability to deliver tension from this team is high. Noyce builds the tension slowly in real-time as Amy notices police cars with sirens blaring speeding down an isolated road on what would normally be a quiet trek through the woods surrounding her neighborhood. Then comes a deluge of warnings signs that something big is going down. She calls the mechanic shop to check on her parent's car (they are on the way home from vacation) and is told the streets are blocked off near Lakewood High School. Then comes the Amber Alert and news story that an active shooter is on campus and the school is on lockdown. To read the full article, click here. Fort Worth Report is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that produces factual, in-depth journalism about city and county government, schools, healthcare, business, and arts and culture in Tarrant County. Always free to read; subscribe to newsletters, read coverage or support our newsroom at fortworthreport.org.