Director: Nicholas Jarecki
Year Released: 2012
Rating: 2.0
A successful businessman (Richard Gere) finds himself in a ton of trouble: not only is he fudging the numbers for his own company (and under investigation for it) but he kills his difficult, needy mistress (Laetitia Casta) in a car accident ... and flees the scene for fear of a bigger scandal. As charismatic as Gere is, he can't quite hold all this together: Jarecki is essentially asking you to 'side with' a scoundrel of a human being who thinks nothing of cheating on his wife, lying to everyone (including his daughter, his CIO) and using his former driver's son (Nate Parker), who is basically the movie's sole Angry Black Guy. Tolerance for his nefarious methods creates identification issues (he is the 1%, in other words) and having Tim Roth's police detective character be a scumbag determined to nab him basically permits Roth to 'act' up a damn storm. By the conclusion, Gere evades capture, outwits the Roth, saves Parker's character (who did him a major favor), is embraced by his mistress' mother and is celebrated as a humanitarian during a formal engagement - sure, his wife (Susan Sarandon) is going to try to clean him out with her divorce settlement, but he'll work his way out of that problem, for sure. Money solves many problems.
