When I read the synopsis I thought it must be a satire, so it shocked the heck outta me to discover just how seriously this film treats it's premise of a network television program that presents people killing themselves for money. It plays everything one hundred per cent straight; gives characters believable motivations; tries to navigate around the tricky issues of how it could be allowed on the air and how people might react to it, etc. Performances are sincere and credible; the direction is serviceable - primarily to be commended for the emphasis on making everything as real as possible; for the most part the script is intelligent and astute. And for the majority of the film my only complaint was that it could have delved even deeper into the moral, ethical and social implications even as it was clearly telegraphing where the movie was headed. The inevitable connection of plot threads which otherwise might seem a little heavy-handed seemed the perfect opportunity to really explore the complex issues being addressed. Sadly the film stumbled hard towards the finale in a desperate attempt to end on a positive note, even if that meant suddenly hurling the carefully established reality out the window and becoming stock, shallow and predictable. It sold itself out for a "happy-ish" ending. In that context what had earlier seemed simply a bit too obvious (you can clearly guess which characters are going to end up on the program) suddenly becomes more manipulatively pedestrian. I understand the urge to present a positive, hopeful message, but the switch from dark to light needs to be handled with more finesse and caution otherwise - as happens here - you simply spoil what was otherwise an excellent little film. It felt like a desperate alteration instead of something being built towards - perhaps it was imposed on the filmmakers during postproduction? Yeah, I'll choose to think that, rather than the filmmakers simply lost the courage to be true to their tale: which, in a nutshell, is the difference between something like Network, and what we have here.
