Mark Reviews Movies: SHARPER

Sharper, A24/Apple Original Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 9, 2023

Once one understands the game that's being played in Sharper, there's very little that comes as a surprise. In fact, the mere knowledge of a game being played in the first place ruins the attempted narrative trickery of Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka's screenplay, and the movie's opening, which announces that the title isn't a comparative adjective but a noun describing a deceiver, basically gives away the idea that something is about to be afoot here.

The problem isn't necessarily the game itself, although the constant and repetitious twists become the foundation of a predictable pattern. It's mostly that there's nothing beneath or complementing them within this story. The basic concept here is superficially intriguing, as Gatewood and Tanaka peel back layer after layer of an overarching plot until we get at its origin. Underneath all those layers of scheming and deception, though, is a mostly hollow core, because the only potentially interesting and human elements of this story are to be within those discarded layers of the tale.

All of this, of course, makes a discussion of the plot—and, since so much of this movie depends on its plotting, the movie itself by extension—difficult to maneuver, but here it goes. We first meet Tom (Justice Smith), who manages a used bookstore, and before we get to know a single thing about him other than the fact that he loves books, Tom meets Sandra (Briana Middleton), a doctoral student who walks into the shop looking for a gift for one of her professors.

The two have a moment over their shared appreciation for the written word, and even though Sandra turns down Tom's initial offer to take her out to dinner that night but accepts his offer to let her have the book until she can pay him later, she returns as he's closing shop to pay him back. She also takes him up on the dinner invitation, and before you know it, the two are in the midst an intense, whirlwind romance, portrayed in a montage that depends exclusively on how well Smith and Middleton make eyes at each other. They do it well, and it's not as if the performances of these various, likely-not-at-all-as-they-seem characters amount to any kind of issue with the movie.

Is this all that can be said about that plot? That's not a rhetorical question, reader. Without ruining the only experience this movie is trying to provide, how much can be revealed about where this relationship goes, which characters are introduced in the subsequent chapters of this tale, and how those characters may or may not—but definitely do—fit into the bigger picture? The very fact that there is so much concern for how little details could give away so much of the movie's potential impact is probably proof that there is so little to anything other than the plot.

It would be nice to discuss Tom and Sandra's relationship outside of the how, when, and why the other shoe drops in it, but to do so would already get one started to think ahead of the plot. It would be even better to be able to talk about Max (Sebastian Stan), the next character we meet and a consummate charmer. On the surface, Max is fascinating, because he seems to have it all—a life of privilege and wealth—but goes around pulling off relatively low-level cons for kicks.

That's at least the notion we get of the guy when his family life is shown later, but this is a story that teaches us quickly and reminds us often that surfaces aren't to be trusted. Who is Max—or any of these characters, for that matter—other than the orchestrator of some number of deceptions and the pawn in some other number of them?

The final major character is Madeline (Julianne Moore), a widow of some affluence who is dating Richard (John Lithgow), a widower of even greater riches and influence. It's probably not saying too much to mention that Madeline is immediately introduced as Max's mother, and there's yet another relationship that seems to tell us something about these characters—that Max is a spoiled man and that Madeline continues to do the spoiling out of love or guilt or because she simply doesn't know any better. Again, nothing more can be said of them or that relationship, because to do so would be to reveal too much plot that ends up not revealing a single thing about these characters, beyond the idea that there's yet another scheme happening right in front of us.

None of this is to say that Sharper is incompetent or devoid of some intrigue. In general, the performances are solid, and director Benjamin Caron brings a certain stylish flair to the proceedings. There's even some enjoyment in the early stages of the narrative, as we come to realize Gatewood and Tanaka's bigger plan to show us how that first deception really began. Once we actually realize that nothing about these situations and characters can be trusted, though, there's little reason to care about them, either.

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