My Son

Despite not actually saying anywhere in the film, the most interesting thing about My Son is the way it was made. Based on a French film with the same concept, James McAvoy plays a father searching for his missing son. The twist here is that McAvoy wasn't given a script and instead had to improvise his way through the film with a bit of character background and vague outlines of the scenes. 

It's not hard to imagine why McAvoy chose this role as an actor because it's a great challenge. There are several scenes which work especially well as McAvoy isn't held down by the script and can do in the direction that feels right for the character at that moment. 

When I started to think about it a bit more it became less impressive than it first seemed. It's not like McAvoy was improvising entirely given he had outlines for the scenes. The concept also means that there isn't a great deal of dialogue either- McAvoy spends the film either looking sad or beating people up, neither of which would be much different if they'd been scripted. There's only really a handful of dialogue heavy scenes where McAvoy gets to show off his improvisation skills and these are the best parts of the film.

This technique doesn't really improve the viewing experience for the viewer. Instead of carefully crafted lines of dialogue that have been forged over many months and years, we get pretty generic dialogue that was created in the moment. The plot is also uninteresting because a convoluted plot would make improvisation pretty hard, especially when confined to the length of a film. 

I felt like the film didn't really know what it wanted to be. If could have been an emotional story about a father dealing with the psychological effects of his son going missing, from dealing with his estranged wife to managing the guilt that he wasn't there enough. It could also have been a Taken-esque thriller about a father going on the rampage to save his son. The final film tries to do both of these things- the emotional side is well done until it is suddenly dropped by the thriller side is ludicrously badly plotted and makes no sense at all.

I think there's definitely room for films where a talented actor gets to improvise their way through it but this genre just doesn't feel right for it and McAvoy deserved a more interesting and logical plot to contend with.