User reviews

The movie kept me in constant questioning about who the killer was. However, the end left me confused and felt rushed and blended in a way that couldn't be followed. It was an interesting concept, poorly executed. There were too many flashbacks and too much future and present footage that was blended in a way that was hard to be followed. There was a lot of questions unanswered.

This film isn't amazing, but it isn't terrible. It's just an average movie.

I will keep my summation brief as you will have either seen it already or read the synopsis. What lies beneath this entire film, is the question of memory. How accurate is it? How reliable is any single person's account, of anything! What is truth? It's reflected in the philosophical teachings and comes into play within the context of a mystery thriller. In addition, what is guilt really? If a large number of people say something is so, does that make it real? Does having a personal philosophy have to match up with one's own actions?

The film raises these and other fascinating questions. I would hope that one would walk away wanting to explore philosophy in more depth. However, for the average popcorn going movie goer wanting their 'thriller' spoon fed to them, they will of course be disappointed.

Those seeking a little more substance will find this satisfying, playing out, exactly as it should.

I enjoyed the movie. In my opinion the writing was really good, and they tried to make it suspenseful but it wasn't very, in my opinion.

Guy Pearce plays a college Philosophy professor who just so happens to own the same looking car as the last person seen before a young woman went missing. Or was it him? Pierce Brosnan is going to figure it out, as he's playing the homicide detective. Along the way, Guy's wife is trying to figure out if her husband could have really had anything to do with this.

I don't have really anything bad to say about it, but it wasn't the best movie that Pearce or Pierce have ever been in, though they do act well together. I'd love to see them do another film together.

This movie is a slow burner, it REALLY gave me sort of a "Memento" vibe while watching it. They probably could have made it better though, there was plenty of room for improvement. But like I said, I enjoyed it. Decent flick to pass a couple hours.

I loved to see Brosnan as an American homicide detective. The man has been becoming more and more of a genuine actor lately. Magnificently paired with Guy Pearce this time, providing the correct kind and dose of contrast. And maybe for the first time ever, I can state that Minnie Driver feels "right" in her role.

Though similar stories have been covered zillions of times, in the past decades mostly by TV shows like CSI, the focus is on something else here: The difference between reality and the perception of it. A mid-aged man teaching philosophy, one who raises genuine questions on his actual culpabilitiy, functions very well as the central character, more so than you might expect.

A couple of visual tricks helped the film grow on me as well. One was the shot in which we saw the pole to one side of which the poster for the (fake) bunny search was just stapled, whereas on the other side the suspect saw the poster for the missing girl. The other was how the dialogue between the husband and wife was shown, reflecting from two mirrors standing side by side, the couple talking to each other physically whereas the visual trick functioned to reveal they were rather speaking into oblivion in solitude, with their reflections looking the opposite ways. I wonder if this was a homage to a way older scene from the history of cinema, something by Tarkovski maybe, or if the filmmakers came up with the idea on their own.

There was almost nothing "wrong" with the movie. The scenes functioned, tension and mystery built up well enough till the final act. And then...

Well, the film ended in a way that you could expect. That's it.

As a viewer, I felt deprived of a potentially awesome version of that very same finale, which could have been created simply by re-editing certain scenes. Ending such a story with questions hanging in the air is not awkward at all, but there was either some laziness, or some confusion on what emotions to extract from the audiance.

With Pierce of previous "memento" problems in the cast, this could well have become as captivating as Seven. Maybe a false lead was needed to provide some distraction from the main issue.

Wasted opportunity but still worth a watch.

Mystery/thrillers can sometimes put themselves in a bind. They create a 'did he/didn't he' scenario and base their movie around it, but the problem with that is if the answer is one of the options (usually "he didn't") then you don't have a story worthy of a movie, and thus the answer is simple to work out. 'Spinning Man' finds itself in this predicament and takes a unique route to try and escape it. Did it work for me? Not really.

You leave the film with a little bit of a "what was the point?" mentality. The film being quite well made actually covers this up partially, but it's still there lurking at the back of your mind. The film is at its strongest when it is creating psychological parallels with the story that is going on. It's easy to tell the film was based off a book, because it is very well crafted in that sense. The acting from the main three - Guy Pearce, Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver - is also very strong and helps carry what could otherwise have been some very clunky dialogue in places.

The film shares a lot of similarities with 'Memento' (and no not just because Pearce is again in the lead role) yet it too often feels like an episode of 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'. The pacing is a little lazy in spots which creates this feeling. This is far from must-watch material, but there is still enough here to make for a perfectly passable film.

"Spinning Man" is a very intelligent film that draws interesting parallels between a philosophy teacher's search for truth and that of a detective. The performances, particularly by Pierce and Bronson, are excellent. The plot is satisfyingly complex with an ever-tightening noose of circumstantial evidence, but seems a bit contrived and ultimately disappointing with a bit of a deus ex machina ending and a bit of misdirection in the denouement. Production values are adequate, with several parallels involving rodent traps, dependencies and posters for missing pets, although some of the parallels seem a bit spot-on. The picture is gloomy with weather suggesting an impending storm, reflecting the mood of the characters.

Was an engaging movie up until the ending, when it ran off the rails and was disappointingly vague & floundering. Watching the directors narration still did not answer many obvious questions.

Evan Birch is a happily married man with two beautiful kids and a caring wife. He teaches philosophy at the university which also qualifies him as a wisdom bearer. With blissful family life and fulfilling career Evan could not ask for better. But, wait, it is not what it looks like, there is more to it. There is girl missing in town, a teen, studying at the same university Evan is associated with, and guess what? Evan is suspected for her disappearance. Police are interrogating him but how can a law-abiding citizen with beautiful family, friends and a satisfying professional life has anything to do with a teens disappearance?

Well, the protagonist here will confuse you about his nature, psyche, disposition, with strange observations, deed, and demeanor. Making you question his virtue and dignity. But at the same time his goodness and nobility creates also a positive vibe for him. And there is your 'mystery' connected with the protagonist himself. Did he or didn't he?

Spinning man is well executed as a mystery thriller, but it could have been better, regarding the strong narrative and cast. Based on the novel of the same name, screenplay is written cleverly, screwing with audiences minds and have them making assumptions while arranging events rapidly. Guy Pearce is fabulous concerning the difficult character he is playing. Brosnan also shines as a detective.

Overall , spinning man is worth a watch, if you dig ephemeral perplexity.

The film's narrative evolved in complexity to the point that different paralel narratives, the blending of past and present, identities and versions of the same stories made everything confusing. Some people got that it was very deep because it questioned the reliability and indeed the concept of memory, etc., etc. However a more clear narrative and another, confusing finale would have been desirable

I thought this movie was great , I was hooked from the start .

The acting was topnotch , Pierce Brosnan and Guy Pierce were excellent in their roles. Minnie Driver played her part to perfection , it was kind of sad to see the underlying instability of their marriage showing in her words and actions .

I had read the reviews before I watched , and so I was expecting to be very disappointed with the ending ,but, I was not .

In the real world not everything is wrapped up perfectly and explained in detail.

I thought the ending was hard hitting, and realistic in a cruel way.

I highly recommend this movie , its not made to order .

A good thriller is often referred to as a cat-and-mouse affair. Here there are literally multiple mice plaguing the home of a respectable Philosophy of Linguistic Professor, at precisely the same time as he is the mouse in the hunt for a female student's presumed murderer. Geddit? Don't worry: if you miss it the first time, you'll get it when it comes up again later, as it does again and again.

Pierce Brosnan plays (well) out of his usual range and assumes the puzzled gravitas of the cool-headed cop with a drinking past. Minnie Driver is ok as the Prof's doubting, suspicious wife, but she's not given much to do apart from doubt and be suspicious. Guy Pearce is de ent as aforementioned Prof, but his early arrogant posing gets a bit tedious as the story progresses. (His name, by the way, is Evan Birch, which in a movie that mixes its metaphors and symbols like a drunk in a cocktail lounge, must surely be meant to suggest both Evenness, if that's a word, and, well, that's he straight and upright as a birch.)

Alexandra Shipp, as the young female student the Prof is most recently entangled with, owns the screen at every appearance, and shows the kind of potential that makes everyone else look like they're simply passing the time while waiting for her undeniable star quality to be recognised.

Too much of the time, though, all this feels like something from 1988 rather than 2018 (the heavy-handed symbolism, the clichéd tortured genius who comes across to everyone around him as an arrogant monster, etc etc). As a fast ride through desire and guilt, fear and self-loathing, it has something going for it and might even have worked if it relied less on off-the-peg movie clichés and, instead, looked deeper into the central character's motivations.

The first half, at least, is more than watchable and quite engaging in its own way. The ending, as many other viewers have said here, is simply bad. Even/Evan awful. Between the two, there are intriguing glimpses of the better movie this might have been but isn't, not least because the young women in it all remain beautiful temptresses and not one is ever realised as a fully formed character in her own right.

That's a mistake. And a real pity. As every philosophy student knows, we are made, or revealed, in our interactions with others.

This story is engaging because the accusation is grave and impacts on the professor's life in many ways. The film remains suspenseful until the disappointing ending . The build up crashes down big time, but it tries to cover the disappointment up by being too clever.

A college student Joyce Bonner (Odeya Rush) goes missing and police detective Malloy (Pierce Brosnan) keys in on Philosophy professor Evan Birch (Guy Pearce) who is known to have affairs with students.

This really needed more suspects, but we have only one and I couldn't make up my mind if he was guilty or not. He acted so innocent and uncaring that I thought it couldn't be him. Yet, maybe that is what they wanted me to think. Yet there was no one else. His wife Ellen (Minnie Driver) was coming to believe their 5-yrs ago in another town was closing in on her and she doesn't want to move again.

Detective Malloy tells Professor Evan that they both have something in common: they both seek the truth.

I liked Pierce Brosnan as the detective and kind of hope he will do more of this kind of character in other movies. Hey, we need a good guy in movies once in a while. I just couldn't read Guy Pearce as the professor as everything told me he was innocent............yet.........there was no one else.

Notables: Alexandra Shipp as Ana, a student who had some kind of history with the professor; Clark Gregg as Paul, Evan's lawyer.

The title indicates a spinning man, but Evan wasn't shown spinning any which way. Yes, he may have felt the spinning inside. The last scene shows the mouse the family caught spinning on a wheel. Kind of contrived I thought.

Will you be surprised when you see the ending? I was. (5/10)

Violence: No. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Humor: No. Language: Yes, near the end. Rating: C

Guy Pearce is a professor of philosophy at a local college. He is married to Minnie Driver and has two young children. When a college student goes missing, the police investigation in the person of Pierce Brosnan focuses on Pearce, revealing old secrets to him and Miss Driver.

I found it annoying. Not only was there the Lifetime Channel lighting, but there was an enormous sense of coyness in the way the truth of what had happened is revealed: Pearce is questioned by Brosnan or Miss Driver or his lawyer, Clark Gregg; he offers a response of poor memory, and a Pontius-like query of what is truth, and eventually we get to see the actual events unfold in flashback. There's no focus for viewpoint or sympathy, and I was left with a very clear feeling of being deliberately manipulated by a sophomore philosophy major who thought he was being oh, so clever.

This movie -as most of movies based on books or novels- tends to have a lot of philosophy between its layers, and the main questions this movie emphasised on are, What is the truth ? Is it subjective or Objective ? Is it what really happened ? or Is it our interpretation of what happened ?

The good thing is that you will be given a way to follow after watching this movie regarding the previous questions, but that philosophical point of view didn't ruin the watching experience but it enhanced it by adding to the thrill and suspense that will not end till the credits.

The movie has a great team such as "Pierce Bronson" which i believe he did his lowest roles in the movie but that doesn't mean he wasn't good, in addition to "Guy Pearce" who played his role really well, and "Odeya Rush" the younger version of "Mila Kunis" has beautiful eyes and smile and i would like to see her more on the screen. But i felt "Minnie Driver" didn't add a soul to the role by her expression-less face.

At the end, it's a good psychological drama movie that you can enjoy watching at home not at the theaters of course, you can catch some nice quotes out of it, and it will keep you focused till the end so no space to feel bored here.

This one was somewhat interesting for the first 30 minutes or so, but became rather dull and a bit frustrating to watch after awhile. As others have said in the reviews here, the ending was unsatisfying and seemed incomplete.

The protagonist is not a likable character, the viewer is unlikely to identify with him. Some parts of the script were nicely written and brief moments were somewhat philosophical and thought-provoking, but overall the story is neither interesting nor enjoyable.

I found the first part of the movie intriguing as I pieced together Evans's unusual behaviors and explanations for everything. By the end I felt a little cheated that more wasn't clearly explained.

Philosophy professor Evan Birch (Guy Pearce) believes the truth is a relative concept. His wife Ellen (Minnie Driver) prefers the dictionary definition especially as Evan has form for having having affairs with his students.

When a pretty student goes missing. Detective Malloy (Pierce Brosnan) investigates and Evan quickly becomes the prime suspect because of circumstantial evidence.

Spinning Man is a crime novel that does not translate easily on the screen. Evan is just unlikeable and that is without getting into the linguistic subtext of the plot.

Worse, I felt let down by the ending as it had no payoff. It was like watching a badly made episode of Columbo with philosophy thrown in.