Netflix A-Z: Zipper (2015)

Its the last movie of Round 2 of Netflix A-Z!

Our Z selection is Zipper! My husband got to choose between the few choices, most notably Zipper and Z for Zachariah and he chose this one. I think both weren’t quite so appealing  but this one maybe seemed to have more of an edge.  I don’t know is mindset behind it. Mostly I don’t even give that much thought to my Netflix A-Z! Its the point that I’m exploring movies that had intrigued me and ended up on my list and the random times its not, its just giving a chance to something new. Why not, right?

Enough rambling, let’s check this out! 🙂

Zipper (2015)

Director (and co-writer): More Stephens

Cast: Patrick Wilson, Lena Headey, Ray Winstone, Richard Dreyfuss, John Cho, Dianna Agron

A family man has it all until he risks losing everything due to his inability to fight off his obsessive temptation for other women.-IMDB

A few things to address before we begin.  IMDB’s summary is kind of part right.  We’re looking at a family man but also a man striving for some political power with a lot of potential of success, currently as a federal prosecutor. This is a political (sexual/erotic?) thriller. Now that we know what we’re meant to be seeing, let’s continue.

Its not hard to say that Zipper has one very fantastic pro and that is its cast. Patrick Wilson, Lena Headey, Richard Dreyfuss, Ray Winstone, John Cho and  Dianna Agron, even though she gets on the cover of the poster (not the one I chose here) but has a very small role: they are all decent actors and actresses and make up for the depth the characters should carry.

This is also where I start talking about cons.  First of all, don’t go and believe that this is anything like Gone Girl or that its a thriller.  Its neither of those things even if it tries to be the latter. I’m a huge fan of Gone Girl so maybe my love might skew how I feel towards that statement but without any comparison, since I never thought to compare the two, Zipper lacks a story or maybe it lacks simply a good pacing for the story it wants to tell or even feels like it might have lost direction of where it wanted to go with all this.

Thing is, I’m not bothered by sexual content or anything like that.  The deal is with Zipper is that in the first 20 minutes (maybe shorter, I didn’t check the time), there was a lot of watching Patrick Wilson’s character Sam Ellis masturbate. Like, you know, the back of him of course because we need to have some class here.  This isn’t pornographic material especially with the cast, although we do  some naked ladies like Lena Headey and some of the escorts he encounters. It would be nice to know what the movie was trying to get.  Because the ending is even worse especially when Sam Ellis himself doesn’t know why he did all that stuff but I guess it refers back to a speech he has during the movie about finding yourself because you can never change who you are or something like that. What makes me a little more frustrated is that there are some complex characters here.  There is a hint of its existence but the story is not put together well enough to give it time to be more.

While I’m not a fan of political thrillers, the political portion of this wasn’t actually a lot other than the fact that Sam Ellis tried really hard to live in this alternate reality as Bob Fisher who was paying all these escorts but hoping he wouldn’t be noticed.  I think that is ridiculous personally but I can accept what they were trying to do and understand it. The political portion was really dealing with people and trying to avoid people caught up.  Once the second part of the movie starts off with investigations of the escort agency he was a client of and all that bit, it picks up a decent pace but doesn’t last long enough for it to have an impact.  Its where I feel the movie could have spent more time on and chopped a bunch of the beginning away since it didn’t make me connect with his character more but rather just felt dragged out.

Overall, Zipper was a disappointment especially with the cast that it had.  The cast did fine in their roles as limited as the story was. The standout most probably will have to go to Patrick Wilson. The story could’ve been structured a little differently with focuses more on the second half than the first’s pacing and it might have been better.

End of Round 2 of Netflix A-Z!
A little break while I construct the next round which may possibly be indie themed!
Do you have any other suggestions or recommendations on Netflix?