The Loft

It all sort of comes apart in an orgy of clumsy over-explanation that doesn’t truly explain anything. But the quintet is well-cast.

The five leads earn kudos for their ability to come across as something approaching credible.

For the most part, The Loft struggles to engage even on the level of tawdry potboiler, joining the forgettable ranks of 2005’s "Derailed" and 2008’s "Deception" as yet another underwhelming one-night stand.

The Loft's boorish leads aren't sensible enough to be worth caring about, making the film's character-driven conclusion feel like a self-defeating cop-out.

This long-delayed would-be erotic thriller is a shabby bore that promises viewers any number of kinky thrills and then proceeds to deflate those expectations.

This silly chamber piece about sex and murder elicits only yawns, interrupted by the occasional unintentional giggle.

All the men's wives are shrews, prigs or doormats; all the conquests doe-eyed blonds with sucked-in cheeks. All the dialogue is as witty as this exchange: "You're a sick f---!" "No, you're a sick f---!" They're all sick f---s, frankly, and the actors are dreadful while playing them.

Everyone seems to hate this movie and I can kind of understand why but to me this was a cool, sexy, twisty and entertaining thriller. I do actually genuinely like this movie. The plot follows five married guys who invest in a loft so they can take their mistresses their and then one day they walk in and find a dead body and they must find out who did it. now none of these characters are necessarily likable but the performances behind them are pretty good. Karl Urban is great as per-usual, James Marsden is a stand out and gives the best performance in the entire movie, Matthias Schoenaerts is also very good reprising his role from the Belgium film, Eric Stonestreet is serviceable to his role but not really all that good and Wentworth Miller is just plain awful and awkward in his role. Rachel Taylor is quite surprisingly good as one of the mistresses and Isabel Lucas is really hot (she sheds a lot of skin and it is kind of awesome) and has definitely improved on her acting skills. While the film is very confusing and takes a little too many twists here and there, I did enjoy the unraveling and the motives, it kept me guessing until the end. My biggest issue with the movie is its ending it just felt a little too nice for how dark and serious the movie is. In the end I found this to be a very entertaining movie that I would go back and watch again because of its ensemble and its fun plot. I know it has a 0% on rotten tomatoes and everyone seems to be hating it but I really like and I give "The Loft" an A-. It is now in my list of guilty movie pleasures and underappreciated movies. Grade: A- Rated R, 104 min. Open Road Films

Infidelity burns, friends might not be there to share the heat. The concept of having a getaway place to fornicate is enticing, if one is seriously considering such sexual mischief The Loft serves as a guide of what should not be done. Boasting good cast and decent drama thriller, the film has pretty interesting twists and turns. However, the use of multi-perspective in varied timelines is occasionally as messy as the portrayed adulterous acts. One woman is found dead in an apartment which turns out to be clandestine rendezvous point for five married men. The resulting roller-coaster ride takes the plot shifting constantly between past and present. It also chains together the individual story of each men, as well as their confessions with the police, resulting in many subplots. It's an ambitious undertaking, which the film is barely able to pull off. The film method of transition is choppy. Not to mention it needs to reveal important information just at the right time, so expect backtrack aplenty. With many characters to portray, the movie sometimes veers from the mystery and rehearses overly dramatic secret lovers or scheming friends premise. Fortunately, its layered narrative pays off with good plot twists along the way, even though the journey there can be exhausting. With good line up consisting Karl Urban, Wentworth Miller and James Marsden, the acting is decent. They do their best despite the characters beings sociopaths, pathological liars or immoral jerks at best. It's very hard to identify with them as they can be ridiculously conniving, near the level of obsession. Emotionally detached is an understatement. The Loft does have good cinematography and crisp design, so its visual matches the big screen, although somehow it reminds me of TV crime drama series. It offers a degree of entertainment with adequate suspense and thrill. A word to the wise: Best friends should never move in together, or share one apartment for promiscuous purpose.

Five married men enjoy sharing a beautiful apartment for their trysts, until a woman turns up handcuffed to the bed and dead. This is a classic whodunit with flashbacks to lay out the clues and every character having a motive. The plot keeps you guessing, but the suspicious glances, sometimes portentous dialogue and the director's stylistic flourishes get in the way of any tension. On the positive side, the movie's got an attractive, able cast and a high-end look. If you don't delve too deeply and appreciate this film as a crime puzzle you might enjoy trying to put the pieces together.

A group of five middle-aged guys share the keys to a private, secret condo expressly for their extramarital affairs. One morning, a bloodied dead woman is found in the bedroom and the arguing and finger-pointing begins. The Loft seemingly has all the ingredients for a great small-scale tension cranker, but ambition gets the best of it, it tries to go large, and the whole thing blows to bits on the launchpad. It's terribly acted, for one, which is something of a surprise given the healthy careers enjoyed by its stars. Karl Urban and James Marsden are well-seasoned, even if they aren't exactly leading men, and Eric Stonestreet - while miscast in a very adult role - should at least know how to carry himself on the screen. Instead it's amateur hour, where limp first-takes abound, and the finished product is something I would expect from a bit of Cinemax softcore, not a polished big-budget production. I don't care about, or even remotely like, a single one of the characters, the writing goes around in circles seeking extra twists, and the ending really doesn't make any sense. Points for the concept, and for a few scanty bits of eye candy, but otherwise this is a major whiff.

I don't often agree with movie critics but they nailed it on this one. Just watched it on TV - great premise, very promising. BUT, in their haste to create a whodoneit with plenty of twists and turns, the writers and directors forgot to create characters that had any depth. We don't know very much about any of them, and what we learn comes out in a mess of scattered flashbacks. The dialogue is stilted for the five guys involved and the wives are indistinguishable. I kept watching because I was curious, but it's not an engaging film. Somewhere between letting us know it's a murder mystery in the beginning and how the pieces fall together in the end, we don't get a very cohesive movie.