Saturday, September 13, 2014

Arthur Newman (2012)


Have you ever wished you can up and leave the life you are living and start a new one with a different name, a different outlook on life, and a different personality? I think we all have wished that at some point. I definitely wish I could. I would want to be someone stronger who is not so emotional and attached. I would want to be like the character Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn Nine-Nine who is like this total bad ass who could melt your soul with one look. I would mostly want to just live my live. I feel like I have not lived that for all of my twenty-six years on earth I have been afraid to let go and just do things. I have always felt stuck and it is killing me to no end.
Arthur Newman takes two people from two completely different backgrounds and brings them together through their want to be someone they are not.
Wallace Avery (Colin Firth) feels stuck in his life. He is a manager of a Fed Ex with a girlfriend who kind of likes him but just puts up with him for the most part and a son who does not even want to speak to him. Wallace buys a new identity and decides to fake his own death. He tells his girlfriend that he is going on a camping trip that will end with him on the beach. On the beach Wallace throws a few beers around, takes off his socks and shoes, and leaves his wallet in one of his shoes.
Wallace takes off on the road as his new identity Arthur J. Newman. In one town he drives through he sees a group of cops have blocked off part of the road. They are trying to get a young woman (Emily Blunt) out of a car she has stolen. Arthur does not think anything of it until he sees the girl at the same motel he is staying at. She is sitting incoherently on a chair beside the pool. Arthur sees something is not right with her at all and takes her to the hospital. Trying to get her checked in he finds her ID and finds her name is Michaela and she snaps back that she wants to be called Mike. Sometime later a doctor tells Arthur that Mike overdosed on cough syrup with codeine and needed her stomach pumped.
The following day Arthur waits for Mike so he can give her a ride. He did not want her to go along with him but they get to know each other. They find out they are both trying to run away from their responsibilities and from being who they originally were.
Colin Firth and Emily Blunt were great together. Their roles were corky for them or at least they seemed so to me. Arthur and Mike were darker roles for Firth and Blunt than I am used to seeing them in. Both Blunt and Firth did a fantastic job with their characters. They were both so uncomfortable and unhappy with themselves that they make you feel kind of uncomfortable watching them. I like those kinds of characters and they only really work if the acting is good.
      Arthur Newman was a good movie. I remember wanting to see it when it was originally released. I had no clue what it was about but I just wanted to see it because I really like Emily Blunt. She did not disappoint and neither did Colin Firth. The story did not disappoint either. It was unlike most movies that are released today. The characters were not very likeable and the story ended in a not so typical way. I like untypical endings very much. I liked how this showed that running away and becoming some else is not all it is cracked up to be, there is no real happily ever after. Arthur Newman is a movie I suggest seeing

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