Soooo...that was interesting. They went a little Jason's Lyrics, Misery, Saw, and Skeleton Key on us.
Acting was pretty much on point, but there were a few questionable style choices. It looks like the movie took place in New Orleans, but Ben Carter (Mike Epps) is the only one with a strong Nawlins accent (accentuated by perhaps an over usage of "babeh"). Why doesn't his brother have a similar accent? Perhaps because Tommy Carter (Anthony Mackie) is supposed to be the educated brother who is a famous author. Even if I buy that, some of that accent should have slipped out when he was being tortured in Angel Sanchez (Forrest Whitaker) basement. Speaking of Angel Sanchez and Sophie Sanchez (Nicole Ari Parker), Sophie's first line to her husband Angel was the most elementary line of Spanish ever. I'll give you a minute to guess..."Donde esta Francesca?" Or something of that simple nature. That was the only Spanish spoken by the Sanchez, and there was no type of accent. Not sure what to make of that.
So here's the plot by movie:
Misery - Angel gets Tommy to autograph a book written by Tommy, and the pages are extremely worn, leading one to think he is a big fan of the book. After some attempts at counseling Angel, Tommy tells Angel he has to go out of town for a few weeks, and it's probably best for Angel to seek counseling from someone else. As Tommy prepares to leave, Angel knocks him out and wraps/ties him up in the basement to torture him. Cue...
Saw - Not only is Tommy tortured by Angel, and later his brother Ben and wife Maggie (Sanaa Lathan), Tommy pulls the ultimate Saw move. To escape from his cuffs he chops off part of his hand with a dull butcher's knife and sears it on a furnace! O, and in classic Saw fashion, torturing Tommy is revenge for pain inflicted by him upon Angel (specifically killing his mother), and throughout the torturing Angel is trying to get Tommy to admit the horrible act he committed. But did he??
Jason's Lyrics - So Tommy and Ben are classic good son, bad son. And in Hollywood, sometimes that means bad son covers for good son who really isn't all that good after all. Before we get into the meat of their relationship, might as well mention Ben was interested in Maggie first, and then while he was in jail Tommy ended up with Maggie and married her! I suppose Maggie's character was just a pawn to divide the brothers, similar to Jada in Jason's Lyrics, except they both wanted Maggie. Moving on, so the beginning scene of the movie is a drunk Tommy behind the wheel of a car with a wasted Ben sitting next to him. Tommy hits someone and crashes. Ben tries to get him to wake up and says that he hit someone and they have to get out of there. Flash forward 4 years, Tommy is author/life coach, and Ben just came back from county jail. You think, o, he took the blame for killing the person Tommy hit. However, when Ben starts talking about what he's done for Tommy and keeping secrets, you realize, neither of them have paid a price for hitting whomever was in the road. Interestingly enough, Tommy has actually written a successful book about the accident, leaving out his brother and the person he hit. So as one would assume when we realize Angel's mother is dead, Tommy hit Angel's mother that night. So you go the whole movie thinking Tommy killed Angel's mother, and he and Ben have been keeping it a secret for the last four years. Well, once Angel has Tommy, Ben, and Maggie in one room the rest of the story is revealed. Ben adds that he pulled Tommy over to the passenger side and then went over to the body in the road. At this point, Angel begins preparations to choke Tommy to death, but Tommy interjects that there is more to the story. So apparently, Angel's mother was still very much alive after being hit. Ben went to pick her up, as Tommy was in the car still unable to move after the crash. Tommy hears Angel's mother telling Ben to help her, and Ben...well...he threw her over the bridge! That explains why Angel's memory was of his mom being found dead near the water!
The Skeleton Key - So there's some voodoo and Angel's mom spirit. Angel's mom is pretty powerful. Throughout the movie we see her as Angel sees her. She gives clues that lead Angel to Tommy (his book title and a quote from his book). Before knocking Tommy out, Angel says she told him Tommy can't leave. O, and she unlocks the door meant to keep Angel's daughter locked in a room so she wouldn't see him torturing people in the basement. When she unlocked the door she also taught Angel's daughter a calming mechanism she used to calm him down and then said "Bye." After telling this to her father and using the calming mechanism on him, she and her father walk out of the house and to the sidewalk.
Meanwhile, down in the basement, Angel has untied Tommy's hands and left a gun nearby. Tommy says something about them all being spiritually dead already, and we hear a gunshot. We only hear one gunshot. So I suppose he killed himself. Then the last "person" we see...Angel's mom in the window.
Could have done without the Skeleton Key factor. I think they took the easy/quick way out with that one. I appreciated the twist at the end about who actually murdered Angel's mother. Bad son was indeed the bad son. He may have covered for Tommy when they were young, but this time it was actually him.