Cold Weather

Be prepared to exert a LOT of patience if you're going to make it through this film.

For the first 45 minutes, I really did wonder why on earth I was watching it. A brother, sister, the brother's ex-girlfriend and his best friend sit around various locations not talking or doing anything. Seriously. I understand that a film need not be packed with action in order to be engaging, but the number one rule of character studies is that the characters must be interesting for the film to be. Not so here.

And the characters never really do become interesting, but the film does, after a mystery involving the ex-girlfriend's disappearance begins to unravel. The final twenty minutes or so, devoted exclusively to the brother and sister, and especially the film's final scene, make the viewer realize that the whole movie has really been about the brother and sister all along, and only makes one wish that it had delivered more sooner.

In general this is a film I would recommend, but with the qualification that its engaging second half doesn't completely make up for the tediousness of its first.

Grade: B