Delayed Reaction: Phoenix

The Pitch: A holocaust survivor reunites with her husband who doesn't recognize her after extensive reconstructive surgery.

The bigger the conceit, the bigger the payoff. That's the basic principle to a lot of movies. And technically, it's a different way to talk about the one big leap I always refer to. By that, I mean, the more a movie has to strain itself to set the story up, the better the payoff better be. If a movie like Before We Go has to contort itself so many ways to get to strangers talking to each other all night, then what Chris Pine and Alice Eve say and how they interact better be very engaging. Or, if Serendipity is going to have all these near misses between Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack, then when they finally meet, it better be spectacular.

Phoenix relies on the same idea. There's a lot of set up. Nelly (Nina Hoss) has to need and get the facial reconstructive surgery that makes her hard to recognize. It needs to be a situation in which she doesn't know if her husband betrayed her to the Nazis. The husband (Ronald Zehrfeld) needs to not recognize her even after getting to know her. Nelly has to be able to find her husband in the first place. The audience has to believe that he would ask a complete "stranger" to commit this fraud. That's a lot. So, it better be building toward something great. I quite like where it all went, so I had no problem with it by the end. While I was watching it though, I had my doubts. It's a little slow and exposition-heavy in the beginning. I want to call it suspenseful, but that would be overstating things. I was always curious where the story was going, although I was never "on edge" about what would happen next. It's a good watch.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend