So first of all, I feel like the movie actively pushes the viewer to root for the morally reprehensible and utterly despicable character of Marla. From the very first scene in which she asserts her female dominance over a man, I felt like the film wanted to make her out to be an anti-hero of sorts. The idea that scamming poor elderly people is in any way badass and bossy is preposterous. Throughout the whole movie I just wanted to see Marla get murdered. It's a rare movie which makes the Russian mob, which at one point holds a conversation about choosing new drug mules look like the good guys. Hey, maybe I'm reading the movie wrong. Some say the movie is a black comedy. To that I say, at which point? It wasn't funny at all and felt like a straight up crime/thriller movie. Others might say that there have been other movies in which the protagonist is a monster. And whilst that is true, most of those movies weren't pushing the viewer to want the monster to succeed and if they did the character had at least some motive that made the viewer connect to them. Additionally, even if the anti-hero was sort of glamourised, there is a huge difference between seeing guys like Henry Hill or Tony Soprano mainly kill other mobsters and someone scamming defenceless old people.
Furthermore, this movie should've been over an hour in. As soon as the Russians get involved that should've been all she wrote if the movie didn't make them out to be complete buffoons. They can't kill anyone due to their incompetence and then the boss somehow gets kidnapped by two women like it's nothing. At least, Rosamund Pike basically plays the same character as she does in Gone Girl and she does it well. If the movie made her out to be a straight up villain and pitted her against a likeable character instead of making her a "lioness" then it would've worked out much better. At least, she dies in the end which I didn't expect. At that point I gave up any hope of her getting her due comeuppance and was resigned to accept that I won't get any satisfaction. However, lo and behold she gets shot by the guy who was trying to save his poor mother but which we were meant to think was a stupid pig at the beginning. Well, that definitely made me add a star to my rating at least. Apart from that, everything about this movie was seriously frustrating and for the most part I hated the experience of watching it.
Furthermore, this movie should've been over an hour in. As soon as the Russians get involved that should've been all she wrote if the movie didn't make them out to be complete buffoons. They can't kill anyone due to their incompetence and then the boss somehow gets kidnapped by two women like it's nothing. At least, Rosamund Pike basically plays the same character as she does in Gone Girl and she does it well. If the movie made her out to be a straight up villain and pitted her against a likeable character instead of making her a "lioness" then it would've worked out much better. At least, she dies in the end which I didn't expect. At that point I gave up any hope of her getting her due comeuppance and was resigned to accept that I won't get any satisfaction. However, lo and behold she gets shot by the guy who was trying to save his poor mother but which we were meant to think was a stupid pig at the beginning. Well, that definitely made me add a star to my rating at least. Apart from that, everything about this movie was seriously frustrating and for the most part I hated the experience of watching it.