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ASKING FOR IT
Director: Eamon O'Rourke Cast: Kiersey Clemons, Alexandra Shipp, Vanessa Hudgens, Leslie Stratton, Radha Mitchell, Luke Hemsworth, Ezra Miller, Gabourey Sidibe, David Patrick Kelly, Casey Cott, Casey Camp-Horinek, Leyna Bloom, Lisa Yaro, Demetrius Shipp Jr. MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:37 Release Date: 3/4/22 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 3, 2022 A movie like Asking for It, which sees a group of women fighting back against abuse and sexual assault, shouldn't go easy on its targets, but writer/director Eamon O'Rourke often does to one extent or another. Most of the issue is that the filmmaker has a lot of difficulty determining his targets in the first place. That makes sense to some degree. The levels of harassment and abuse women receive every day are varied, and O'Rourke wants to tackle as many of them as he can here. Our main protagonist is Joey (Kiersey Clemons), a server at a restaurant, who is raped while unconscious by an old classmate. In the ensuing days or weeks of despair and anger, she meets Regina (Alexandra Shipp), a member of a team of avenging women. Some of them have had a similar experiences as Joey, while Lily (Leslie Stratton), a former professional singer, was burned by a stalker and Sal (Radha Mitchell), the group's leader, was disowned by her family for having an abortion. The latter's ex-fiancé Sheriff Vernon (Luke Hemsworth) spends most of the story following the group, trying to help keep them out of too much trouble, and attempting to atone for his mistakes, and yes, he's as big a distraction as he sounds. All of these back stories, though, remain in the background of O'Rourke's wandering plot, which has the team going after frat guys who have raped countless women and a small-town police chief (played by David Patrick Kelly) who runs a sex trafficking ring. The smartest inclusion to the pack of villains is Mark (Ezra Miller), a former online "pick-up artist" who told who-knows-how-many-men to harass and assault women and now runs a far-right militia group. As frighteningly real as that character may be, turning him into some sort of big bad that needs defeating lessens the very notion of how everyday and ordinary the behavior he champions actually is. The team finds ways to make these open secrets public and unavoidable (They break into the fraternity, looking for photographic evidence and just leaving it on the front yard), and it all leads to a series of increasingly violent standoffs. If the Sheriff is a sort of apology for all the awful men here, Beatrice (Vanessa Hudgens), the angriest of the group, serves as a not-too-subtle condemnation of taking revenge and self-appointed justice too far. The movie's final confrontation, though, oddly suggests that neither revenge nor justice should be option. While O'Rourke tries to put an empowering spin on that choice, it results in a wholly dishonest ending to Asking for It, while solidifying the movie's pandering and—dare one say—patronizing tone. Copyright © 2022 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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