Maybe it’s a cop-out to give something that is this much fun to watch a single star, but I cannot in good conscience recommend viewers to spend money on this incoherent, overcooked, – nay, stewed and spoilt – erotic thriller, in which Matthew McConaughey, in full Nicolas Cage mode, becomes obsessed with catching an enormous fish named Justice.
“In Plymouth, everybody knows everything,” Jeremy Strong’s mysterious businessman assures us, clutching a state-of-the-art “fish finder” that looks like it’s from the Early Learning Centre. “Yeah, except what the fuck is going on?” retorts McConaughey’s drunken sailor, Baker Dill. Indeed, it is extremely unclear what the fuck is going on: where we are (the Bahamas, maybe?), what time period it is (present day, I guess?), why Anne Hathaway is blond (no idea), and whether Justice is a figment of Dill’s imagination (no spoilers).
McConaughey and Hathaway are matched in their dead-eyed, phoned-in hamminess as reunited ex-lovers, culminating in a eye-wideningly passionless sex scene, though Jason Clarke, weirdly, seems to be having a good time as Hathaway’s abusive husband. It would be a crime to spoil the M Night Shyamalan-style twist, but if you can stick it out, there’s a point when the movie swerves from bad in a boring way to straight-up hilarious, throwing everything at the wall.
