Well once you eventually come to grips with the fact that you wont be seeing Sly Stallone fight Dennis Leary in the sewers of California (???), you’ll find that you are about to be treated to a pretty special little movie. Demolition is the story of Davis (Gyllenhaal), an investment banker whose life should have been turned upside down the day his wife died in a car crash, but instead his reaction resembled that of someone who simply dropped their morning bagel on the subway floor. "Oh well, that sucks; guess I’ll just have to double up at lunch" (My words not his). His reaction was so indifferent that at one point during his wife’s memorial service you actually see him practicing a fake cry in the bathroom mirror. Now no one can be that cold, right?
His aloofness has everyone around him in shock as he shows up to work the next day like it was business as usual. And the only thing that seems to really affect him is when the bag of M&M’s he buys at the hospital gets stuck in the vending machine. He doesn’t get the candy or his money back, so he decides to write the vendor a letter of complaint. And as he begins to write, he finds himself opening up about the truth behind his marriage. This newfound honesty about who he is and what he wants becomes a cathartic way for him to deal with his tragic loss; so much so in fact that he writes quite a few letters to the vending company.
Well one day the person (Naomi Watts) who actually receives these letters decides that it would be a good idea to reach out to Davis and the two of them develop one of the strangest relationships I’ve ever seen on screen. And all the while he’s doing this, he takes a random comment from his father in law about the breaking down of things to get to the heart of them way too literally. He starts taking apart everything that seemingly broken in his life i.e. his laptop, a bathroom stall door, his refrigerator, and so and so on.
At first Davis seems like he’s one of the worst people to have ever walked the planet but as you find out more about him, you realize that he’s really not that different from you. This movie is about what we truly hold important in our lives and how we can slowly lose ourselves chasing what’s expected of us. This of course is a gross oversimplification of the overall theme of the movie but I don’t want to give too much away in this review. Now they do try and take on more issues than they probably should but it doesn’t take away from the overall effectiveness of the story. This is a heartbreaking story of love and the wrong turns (no pun intended) we can take in life, and it’s because of this that I think this is an important film for anyone who is in a relationship to see as there is plenty you can take away from this experience.
I rate this movie as FRESH!
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