Serenity (2019)

Directed by: Steven Knight | 106 minutes | drama, thriller | Actors: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, Jason Clarke, Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Strong, Charlotte Butler, David Butler, Rafael Sayegh, Michael Richard, Robert Hobbs, Kenneth Fok, Garion Dowds, John Whiteley, Edeen Bhugeloo

For years, Matthew McConaughey was known as a flierefluiter, an actor who mainly appeared in light-hearted romantic comedies and superficial action films and made it his trademark to take his shirt off at least once per film. Around 2012, that started to change. McConaughey realized that he was being typecast, while he has more to offer. To prove that, he decided to only accept scripts that allowed him to show a different side of himself. He was ‘dry’ for a year and a half, but when the makers of more complex films finally managed to find him, it turned out to be a bull’s eye. All of a sudden, the actor best known for his muscular torso received critical acclaim, receiving awards (including for ‘Killer Joe’ (2011), the TV series ‘True Detective’ (2015) and ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013)) and in the spring of 2014 he even picked up an Oscar for best actor for his great role in the biography ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ (2013). McConaughey’s resurrection and the accompanying rave reviews are jokingly referred to in the media as the “McConaissance.”

In ‘Serenity’ (2019) McConaughey falls back into an old pattern, because his shirt is often taken off in this neo-noir, and if the clothes do stay on, the atmosphere is so sultry that the shirt sticks to his body and therefore little to the leaves imagination. Despite this, the role of fisherman Baker Dill is a bit more complex than the roles the actor played before 2012. Dill lives on the subtropical Plymouth Island, a closed community where everyone knows each other and the people make their living from fishing, liters of rum (which is drunk in the only pub on the island) and a little tourism. To make ends meet, Dill takes wealthy tourists on his boat “Serenity” to fish for fish in the ocean. He himself has an obsession for a legendary large tuna, which he almost caught a few times but always slips away (Ernest Hemingway could have written it). Does the beast really exist or is it Dill’s way of repressing his grueling past—he served in Iraq? His mate Duke (Djimon Hounsou) urges him to go safe and focus on commercial fishing, but Dill won’t hear of it. His sluggish life is turned upside down when Karen Zariakas (Anne Hathaway) makes her appearance on Plymouth Island. This femme fatale is an old acquaintance of Dill, an ex-lover even, who left him for the wealthy Frank (Jason Clarke) who turned out to be a violent sadist. She makes the fisherman a proposition: whether Dill wants to take Frank on a fishing trip, and whether he wants to dump him off his boat in the middle of the ocean. She gives him ten million dollars for it. Dill doesn’t like the proposal, but when Karen talks about how their teenage son Patrick (Rafael Sayegh) locks himself in his room for fear of his stepfather and devotes himself completely to computer games, he agrees.

As inherent to the film noir genre, nothing is as it seems and there are quite a few hidden motives that need to be revealed. ‘Serenity’ is in fact built around a number of important twists in its entirety. Who speaks the truth, which events are fact and which are the result of a rich fantasy? A good film noir picks the right moment to reveal the all-important twist, but ‘Serenity’ lays all its trump cards on the table way too early and then peddling all the loose ends. As if we can’t figure out for ourselves how the fork is in the handle. Director and screenwriter Steven Knight really has something to offer, especially as a writer, as evidenced by his resume that includes the Oscar-nominated ‘Dirty Pretty Things’ (2002), ‘Eastern Promises’ (2007) and ‘Locke’ ( 2013) and the ‘Peaky Blinders’ series. It’s all the more curious that he never misses an opportunity to hint at his big reveal. In fact, he even created an unnecessary and annoying side character for the sole purpose of literally communicating the plot twist that it is all about to lead character Dill. Then you can still play with genre conventions (shadows that loom, characteristic dialogues and one-liners), but giving away the big secret in a thriller/noir is of course a mortal sin.

It’s McConaughey who keeps the film bearable, even though it’s on autopilot. Anne Hathaway isn’t as good as she could have been, Jason Clarke’s role is very one-dimensional, Djimon Hounsou suddenly disappears completely and poor Diane Lane (as Dill’s regular fling) languishes in a role far too limited. What remains are the beautiful pictures of the azure blue ocean – the film was shot on and around the island of Mauritius – and an idea that could have resulted in an exciting film in principle, but which is completely ruined by wrong choices.