The Ticket

Good movie!

Good movie!

source: The Ticket

First, Dan Stevens' acting in this is just PHENOMENAL! He is such a good actor and can handle a wide range of roles. I like the plot too and think it is very real. Yes I agree with other people that there could have been more character development before James regained his sight. It didn't fully explain why all of a sudden he became an asshole after he could see. But I think what happened after he regained his sight was totally reasonable. Most people who win the lottery don't end up with a happily ever after. He let lust and greed get the the best of him and lost who he is in the face of temptations, so are most people in the world. I see the weight of sin and the limitations of good morals; I also see kindness and love, friendship, and even redemption. Yes the ending is kind of expected, but it is also very warming. I really like this movie!

Streamed this based on a general interest in following Dan Stevens's post-"Downton" career. Owing to this film's totally amateur sound editing, I could not learn critical information about what these characters were like before the health change that became a key trigger for the whole story. Did not know how and why the marriage seemed to work despite hurdles that many would find crushing, or whether the Dan character had ever before shown signs of an aggressive, competitive personality. I just went from one mumbling, whispering personal scene after another to the not only clear but blasting country songs at the dance venue and totally audible phone sales pitches in the workplace. It's only in the indispensable character-developing scenes that this film leaves us high and dry and totally frustrated. From his IMDb bio page, it looks as if director Ido Fluk has only one 2011 feature-length film to his credit before 2016's "The Ticket," with short films and writing credits (including this film) and assistant directorships in his history. I cannot see how Dan's early (and awkward for everyone!!) departure from "Downton" has led him to projects this lacking in production professionalism and I hope he can right his ship very, very soon. His and Oliver Platt's work is excellent, but how many times can he afford to risk straight-to-DVD oblivion while groping for a long-lasting film career?

To be fair, I am a "mood watcher" meaning, I have to be int the mood for certain things like movies and music. That being said, I did try to watch it several different times and at no point did this movie grab me in any way other than WTF is wrong with this woman (the wife) and she is clearly dysfunctional. Don't get me wrong, the acting was great. It was the story. They could have done so much more with it to make it more interesting or to make the characters have more life to them. To me it seemed flat and I couldn't feel connected to any of the characters at all. I certainly didn't feel sorry for the controlling needy wife or the husband that forgot what it felt like to be blind. Long story short, it was meh. I watched 3 quarters of it and just didn't care how it ended. It felt like a 6 hour movie. I felt every minute of watching it.

I wanted to watch this film as I loved Dan Stevens in Downtown Abbey but even with his acting the film couldn't be saved. I wanted to stop half way and delete it but I kept watching just in case it got better but to no avail. The story went nowhere and was so boring and monotonous so I don't advise you to waste your time on this.

"If you leave, you can't come back." How would you react when you lose your eyesight at a young age, leaving you the rest of your life depending on others, never having seen your wife and child, with no idea how your environment looks like and working as a blind in a Call center for a real estate company (in other words, a hopeless job). And then one day you wake up and you realize you can see again. I'm convinced that it'll be a shock. Finally you can see how attractive your wife is and at the same time find out she's a real control freak. You discover you have a cute little son who's being bullied at school for some time and you're wife never told you about it. And the house you live in looks quite dusty and old fashioned with that flower wallpaper. And on top of that, you are satisfied because you see a pretty attractive guy when looking in the mirror. Time to shape up and become the better flirt, I'd say. This all sounds quite plausible. But James (Dan Stevens) turning into an arrogant, egocentric jerk who only wants to enrich his personal life and get that promotion as soon as possible so that he can improve his materialistic life, felt a little exaggerated to me. Sorry, but the first thing I would do was to go to a zoo, an amusement park or the cinema for example, so I could admire what I missed all those years. But no. James rather starts an ego trip, forsaking those who supported him all these years. A beautiful example of someone who exchanged his physical blindness for a total emotional blindness. The question is, of course, whether this was a natural healing or a divine intervention. James' daily prayer, with him thanking the Lord for his rich life full of well-meaning people, perhaps finally paid off. Maybe that's the reason why he came up with this luminous idea to convince people in church to sell their homes right now and get rid of everlasting debts. In his sales talk, he always uses the story about the person who desperately wants to win the lottery and prays for it every day. But he never buys a lottery ticket. I think the message is as follows : if you want to change your life, you also need to act in such a way that this change is possible. In my opinion, James is convinced he has won that winning ticket, after piously praying for years. But the actions he undertakes afterwards, are dramatically exaggerated in my opinion. And how unlikely the turnaround is at the beginning, the more unlikely the turnaround is at the end. Eventually, it seemed the winning ticket was only valid temporarily. Or was it a divine punishment because James let the dark side of his personality dominate? Anyway, I saw the outcome coming a mile away (pun not intended). Personally, I thought the footage where nothing was to be seen, the most fascinating. An impression of how James looked at the world. A black spot with stroboscopic light effects and misty reflections. A successful demonstration of how a blind person experiences his sight. The most emotional moment was the turning point in the dusty dance cafe where James dances one last time with his wife Sam (Malin Akerman) intimately. Despite the artistic character, the many dead moments and the slow pace, Dan Stevens and Malin Akerman know how to give a lively and fascinating performance. "The ticket" won't be a blockbuster like "Beauty and the Beast", but will show a glimpse of Dan Stevens' versatility. More reviews here : http://bit.ly/2qtGQoc

My own fault, I guess - I thought this was about someone winning the lottery. Did Dan Stevens just want to work on his American accent? If sloths were capable of creating movies, this would be their masterpiece. S-L-O-W, self-indulgent, pretentious "film."

This film was really rather pointless and predictable in the end. If it wasn't so suffused with obvious religious morality (since the movie assumes it must be absolutely wrong to get a divorce, get promoted/make money at work and start a new life) it could have been an interesting drama. I think it's actually insulting to people with disabilities to present the idea that if they became able they would be 'superficial' and 'mean' as a result.