Movie Breakdown: The Secrets We Keep

Pre-Screening Stance:

What happened to Noomi Rapace’s career? It would appear that the last movie of hers I saw was Bright (2017), and I don’t even remember her being in it. In any case, I’m excited to see her in The Secrets We Keep, which looks like a solid thriller.

Post-Screening Ramble:

In a lot of ways, The Secrets We Keep would have worked better as a short film. At its center is Maja, an immigrant living a happy life in the United States with her husband, Lewis (Chris Messina) and her son, Patrick (Jackson Dean Vincent). One day, she sees a man (Joel Kinnaman) that she’s certain is a Nazi that she had a very troubling run-in with during WWII. So, as anyone would do, she hits him over the head with a hammer, kidnaps him, and then implicates her husband by pulling him into the fray. I know this sounds like a lot, but it actually all happens pretty quick, which means the rest of the film features the maybe-maybe not Nazi being yelled at by Maja, Lewis or the both of them. The intense interrogation scenes would have been fine had they only occupied the third act, but there are so many of them throughout the movie that it’s not long before they become repetitive. By the end, I didn’t even care if the guy had done anything at all, I was just ready to move on to something else.

The performances in The Secrets We Keep are fine and the story concept is interesting, but the movie just doesn’t do enough with either to hold your attention.

One Last Thought:

The kid in this movie sleeps through some crazy stuff. Hell, even when he’s awake he seems to not ever see or hear any of the alarming things that are constantly going on around him. It’s the most unbelievable part of the movie!