Delayed Reaction: I Came By

Premise: A political graffiti artist uncovers something nefarious in the home of his latest target.

It’s so simple, but the idea that you messed with the wrong guy is a movie premise that can be revisited over and over without getting worn out. In a more general sense, so many movies are about people who do something a lot and this is the time it happens differently. A mailman delivers the mail each day but today he finds a magic egg. A woman gets a coffee at the same café but today she runs into her old boyfriend from college that moved to town. I Came By is very much one of these movies. George MacKay vandalizes a lot of houses, and this is the one he should’ve left alone.

 

I Came By is a film that I’ll remember positively for the same reasons I probably won’t watch it again. There are some big narrative shifts in the movie that genuinely surprised me. As a result, I never got firm footing while watching it. There was the feeling that anything could happen next, which is something that’s very hard to pull off. However, tropes become tropes for a reason. Filmmakers don’t structure so many movies the same way just because they are lazy. There are formulas that work. We know the pacing and the structure work. When a film disrupts the expected flow of the story, that can be thrilling, but it’s harder to make the structure work. That’s why climactic battles normally don’t start movies. There are ways to make it work. It’s just harder. I Came By makes some exciting choices but that does result in a story with a stuttered pace.

 

What that means is that this is a refreshing movie as a change of pace. It’s there to remind you that not every thriller is going to hit the same tired beats. It’s not a standard bearer of the genre though. It is helped by a strong cast though. Hugh Bonneville gets to use his Downtown Abbey respectability to good use. George MacKay gets to play a modern character for a change. Kelly Macdonald and Percelle Ascott are good too, although I’m not ready to believe that Macdonald is old enough to play MacKay’s mother. The movie even has a couple really terrific comic moments. One in particular will stick with me for a while.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend