Movie Log: Married Life

Married Life is a stylized, retro movie that aims for Big Truths, but doesn't quite close the deal. It's heavily narrated by Pierce Brosnan (in character), and Brosnan tells us what to think, what to expect, and what we're about to see.

It's not nearly as inventive and thought-provoking as it wants to be, and it ends up falling far short of the old noirs that are its inspiration. It's not a bad movie -- it's worth seeing for the performances and as an interesting failure -- but its twists aren't as unique and surprising as it seems to think they are.

Married Life is the story of a double love triangle in 1949, cleverly depicted on the DVD cover. Chris Cooper and Patricia Clarkson are a long-time married couple; they have at least one son (grown up, married, with a young child of his own) and Cooper works at some unspecified but important office job in whatever city this is. Cooper is also having an affair with young Rachel McAdams, and he wants to leave his wife for her...but he can't stand to see his wife hurt, so he decides to kill her instead. (This could be exciting, but it doesn't happen until halfway through the movie.)

Brosnan is Cooper's bachelor friend, a man who has never been ready to be tied down by a woman. And so of course he falls for McAdams as well, and starts trying to maneuver events so that Cooper doesn't kills Clarkson and so that he can end up with McAdams. The movie, then, is the story of these people's relationships over the course of a month or so, as they all pursue their own romantic stratagems and feints.

There is a twist at the end, but not a particularly shocking one; as I said, any genre director handed this project in 1949 would have made a stronger movie of it. Again, Married Life is a pleasant misfire; the ending falls quite flat. If you don't go into it expecting greatness, though, you may be reasonably happy with it.