Fair Play

Fair Play continues to crank the tension higher and higher, with paranoia, fear, and betrayal exploding in a stressful and well-done finale.

I saw Fair Play at Sundance 2023 in a crowd of cinema enthusiasts, making the theater experience electric and engaging! While Fair Play isn't my typical movie taste, it was exceptionally well done, with tension and stress building consistently from start to finish and exploding into all-out insanity and paranoia in the film's final act. My heart was pounding as the selfishness and jealousy of these characters devolved into pure hatred and disdain. Once the credits rolled, I finally felt like I could breathe for the first time in an hour! Domont did so much with so little, mastering suspense and keeping the audience on edge. With such arrogant and self-centered characters, it is hard to "enjoy" the film, but the craft and skill are undeniable, and it's no surprise why it was so well received at Sundance and scooped up so quickly by Netflix.

It’s amazing how one film can be predictable, implausible and preposterous all at the same time, but writer-director Chloe Domont’s debut feature manages to pull off this trifecta of lamentable attributes with remarkable ease. This alleged psychological thriller goes from bad to worse as its plot hole-filled story degenerates from a boring, clandestine office romance into an over-the-top envy-driven battle of egos when one partner unexpectedly gets promoted over the other at a prestigious Wall Street firm. The way in which this unfolds, though, is largely laughable, despite an underlying message that has some noteworthy merit (even if it’s a bit trite in this day and age). The picture might be more worth watching if the two protagonists (Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich) weren’t so inherently deplorable and portrayed with some of the hammiest on-screen acting I’ve seen in a long time. This is all made worse by one of the most awful scripts I’ve come across in a while, with almost as much tawdry, needlessly foul language since “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). Put these qualities together and you’ve got an absolute work of utter trash that makes the prime time soap operas of the 1980s look like epic storytelling. Indeed, as far as how this one plays, all I can say is “No fair.”

"Emily" (Phoebe Dynevor) and fiancé "Luke" (Alden Ehrenreich) are a typically happy, professional, couple, recently engage and well loved up. Gossip is going around the office that "Luke" is destined for a promotion that will mean loads more cash for the pair and she seems delighted for him. Well, boss "Campbell" (Eddie Marsan) has other plans as he decides to give the job to her! Is he delighted? Well outwardly yes, but inwardly...? She is also uncertain. Not of her ability to do her new job, but of how to avoid bruising his increasingly obviously delicate ego. What now ensues is a rather fat-fetched eggshell dance that sees their relationship put under enormous pressure? Can it survive? Well, frankly I didn't care. The whole story seems contrived to create as much tension and distrust amongst the couple who at one stage are about to be married and at the next, well they might not cross the road to chat with each other. It takes a swipe at the greasy pole and at the whole corporate "getting-on" ethos, but in such a linear and unimaginative fashion. Way too many stereotypical attitudes and platitudes and by the end I was really quite uninterested in who got what, if anything, from this rather pedestrian and over-scripted melodrama. Sorry, perhaps I just wasn't in the mood - but this did nothing for me.