Chasing Robert Barker (2015) Reviews

• An insightful and provocative independent film.

  caixote2015-12-28

  Chasing Robert Barker is a very well thought, gripping, and original drama/thriller It's originality lies on the fact it focuses on a character that has never been central piece to any film, the paparazzi photographer. I would dare to say it might establish a new genre, the "paparazzi thriller". This character that we all know about, but know so little of. The film follows Dave, a dispirited photographer in London that starts doing Paparazzi work as a last resort. He roams around at night looking for pictures and, one day, manages to snap a famous movie actor as he leaves a restaurant with a young woman. With the success of the pictures, his boss, a slippery and charming tabloid journalist played brilliantly by Patrick Baladi, pressures him to stay in the case and get more pictures of the couple. As the chase carries on we understand what brought Dave to that position, at the same time as the film exposes how the paparazzi world operates: Bouncers, prostitutes, tabloid journalists, celebrities... While the film draws strong elements from thrillers, keeping you absorbed into the narrative, the director cleverly set up this scenario against a real event, the phone hacking scandal in Britain. If you have read Hack Attack from Nick Davies, the Guardian journalist that helped to uncover the scandal and revealed the relationships of tabloid newspapers and politicians, private investigators, the police, and other shadowy figures, you will see that Chasing Robert Barker, although not focused on this, does bring some of these characters into the narrative, putting them on the way of the protagonist. A more attentive viewer will also notice references to the phone hacking on radio chatter and on some background TV. I saw the film together with a friend that was involved in its funding on Kickstarter, and have to say I wasn't expecting much. But I was quite pleasantly surprised. The script is gripping, the actors are brilliant, music and cinematography are very good. The film does have some flaws, but overall I found it captivating, insightful and provocative. Surely worth the watch.

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• Great movie

  paulocsbrandao2015-12-29

  Amazing performances and excellent direction. Chasing Robert Barker is a film that deserves attention for its cinematic qualities. Especially the aesthetic care, often dirty and dark, to reflect the tension and narrative anguish. The actor who plays the central character also deserves credit for revealing, without excesses, the suffering and moral conflict of the protagonist. Script that deals with shrewd way the squalor of the paparazzi industry. Criticizes and condemns without using clichés and bad dualism and, most importantly, without ceasing to be an interesting story in itself.

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• Riveting and well put together.

  ian-709262016-10-04

  This is an amazing little film. Caught it at the San Diego film festival and all I had in mind was, that's the kind of discovery that Film Festivals are for. Acting is superb and so is directing, photography, music. It follows a paparazzi working in London, UK, and as the day goes on we learn more about him and what took him there, until things start to get complicated with the assignment he's on and with his boss, a corrupt gossip columnist. We never really know where the script is taking us, and when it finally gets there and we know it's gone full circle, it's like: WOW. I've read a comment here from someone saying basically he didn't understand the film. Well, I believe that's your problem, not the film's. Maybe you should watch it again, or look for something a bit more "simple".

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• It's just a miserable man being miserable.

  kire19752016-10-01

  It's just a miserable guy going around the city being miserable to miserable people. His drug of choice is being a Paparazzi, I guess. Something is bothering him from the past, but we never really know what it is. Anything that could be described as plot is only revealed through exposition about two thirds of the way through. And even when that is revealed, it does not make sense how the man who betrayed him actually betrayed him. This movie is awful. I cannot think of one redeeming quality. The other reviewers who keep saying "good film" over and over, well, maybe they just watched a different movie than I did.

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• The weakest "film" I recall to have seen

  sara_vivacqua2015-12-14

  The scrip is linear, weak, repetitive and predictable. An empty history. A potpourri of stereotypes, which we all have seen many times before in bad Hollywood films(the depressed paparazzi who takes pills, his beautiful ballerina wife who commits suicide over a bad critic, the bully boss, the prostitute, the vengeance...). It's clear that the director did no research on the Paparazzi industry but built his narrative in very outdated old clichés, describing the world a paparazzi like a bad mafia plot. The hold-on camera is amateur, narrow, the aesthetic is the of an advert. The "film" is pure pretense and senseless. I don't recall as a film addict to have seen something so insulting to the audience.

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