Before getting into my thoughts on the movie, I just wanted to remind everyone about this…

Tony Amendola is up first today at 5:00 p.m. ET, and I’ll follow at 6:00 p.m.

Tomorrow, it’s Joe Flanigan and the Wyvern Gaming Team.

Should be fun!

At a meeting of G8 Ministers, the head of the IMF, Daniel , invites three curious outsiders to their retreat: a musician, a children’s author, and a priest.  After inviting the priest into his room to receive his confession, Roché is found dead, presumably a victim of suicide.  His fellow ministers are left reeling.  What did Roché confess to the priest?  What does the priest now about their plans?  And was it really suicide?

This movie is described as a philosophical thriller which, in all fairness, sounds like an oxymoron.  And the finished product would seem to bear that out.  The mystery, intriguing at first, becomes increasingly tedious as the focus shifts between the rather sluggish search for answers and cryptic machinations of the ministers, power brokers who are on the verge of unleash some heinous monetary policy on the world.  There’s a message here about the evils of the power brokers that run our world – but it’s a sentiment that feels all too clunky, devoid of any real grounding or detail.

The performances are great and the direction is solid if not occasionally self-indulgent, but the script falls flat.  The characters, like the central narrative, lack depth.  The dialogue is, at times, heavy-handed and borderline embarrassing.

It all builds to an ambiguous and unsatisfying ending with no clear answers marked by one of the most ridiculous scenes I’ve ever seen in which the priest seemingly disappears in full view of a group of mourners after they are all distracted by a passing bird.

Nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is, The Confessions final transition – an Iris Shot reminiscent of old-timey cartoons, is surprisingly apropos.

Join us next Friday when our Crime Club convenes to discuss the Dutch dark comedy thriller Schneider vs. Bax…