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Stranger than fiction

Threat advisory: Elevated - Significant risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

How far would you go to help a friend?

When one of their best friends kills a man under strange circumstances, three friends decide to help him cover it up, but events soon spiral out of their control, leading them to question how well they really know each other, indeed how far should they go to help their friend.

Jared (McKenzie Astin) comes pounding on his best friend Austin's (Todd Field) door in the middle of the night, bloody and battered. Something bad has happened he's killed someone - an intruder - and he needs Austin's help. Together with their two closest friends, Emma (Dina Meyer) and Violet (Natasha Gregson Wagner), they return to the scene of the killing. Upon seeing the body, they realise Jared has not been completely honest with them, and that things are not as they first seemed...

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Life's pretty straight without Twisties.

Stranger than fiction is an entertaining little film that's replete with dark humour, dark twists and white bread. Sure, it's set in Utah, so there's only going to be white bread, but I still haven't figured out how this bunch of incompatible friends came together. Two middle-class guys, an heiress and a nightclub singer. Hmmm...

That said, one wonders what drugs Violet is on. Nothing her character says or does makes sense (up to and including suicide); she is a plot patsy, behaving in whatever way the plot requires to move itself along. The acting is better than you'd expect from a film about life in Utah (and there's not a Mormon missionary in sight), but there's too much co-incidence to willingly suspend your disbelief.

Wait for a cold, wet, rainy night before you watch this film. It will pass the time.

Security censorship classification

MA 15+ (Medium level violence, medium level coarse language)

Surveillance time

96 minutes (1:36 hours)

Not for public release in Australia before date

VHS rental: 19 January 2000

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