: Lonely Hearts
Strange film from a few years ago: it features a star cast of actors like John Travolta, James Gandolfini, Salma Hayek, and Jared Leto, and it tells the sensational true story of an infamous male-female couple who swindled and murdered dozens of widows in the 1940s. I wondered why I hadn’t heard of it. Unfortunately, that’s clear when you watch the film. It is extremely uneven, both in script and tone. There’s tons of modern swearing and dialogue, which feels out of place in a period piece. Some dramatic scenes are excellent, but others fall flat and obviously don’t work. The charming couple, who pose as brother and sister and romance their way into the lonely hearts of wealthy war widows before murdering them, are too weird for the audience to connect with them. We never really understand their motivations. Hayek seems miscast as her Hispanic accent comes and goes and doesn’t seem to fit her character. Her character is basically insane and she comes across as unlikable. The film’s better moments come from Travolta’s character, a widower struggling to connect with his troubled teenage son, but unfortunately that’s an underdeveloped subplot that feels ham-handed and perfunctory. Interesting, with a handful of intriguing scenes, but way to incoherent to be watchable.
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