First Hit: Jennifer Aniston was great in an OK film.
The pain Claire Bennett (Aniston) is in is palpable. Although we don’t learn what caused her to be in this pain until much later, we do piece the possibilities together during the 92 minutes.
The film consists of us following Bennett from support group, to physical therapy, and to home while she pops pills from her hidden stashes. Her former husband Jason (Chris Messina) feels for his former wife, but cannot save her from her self-destruction.
Her mainstay is housekeeper Silvana (Adriana Barraza) who helps to keep the ship upright. She cooks, cleans and mostly cares about Claire and does this in extraordinary ways. She is haunted by dead fellow pain prisoner Nina Collins (Anna Kendrick) who decided she couldn’t stand it any longer and had committed suicide. Nina’s husband Roy (Sam Worthington) is just barely hanging on, with his son Casey (Evan O’Toole) and Claire finds some solace with him.
Aniston is wonderful in this role. I fully believed that she was in pain and she held the space of pain and addiction in an amazing way. Wonderful acting. Barraza was fantastic as Claire’s housekeeper and friend. Messina with a small and meaningful role, done wonderfully. Kendrick was perfect. Although being a hallucination she was perky and intelligently perfect. Worthington was very good as a lost husband of grief. O’Toole was perfect. Patrick Tobin wrote a strong scrip, however it seemed to labor at times. Daniel Barnz did a good job of directing Aniston’s extremely strong performance.
Overall: Although there were strong performances the subject and pacing won’t have this become a crowd favorite.