Jesse Ritter has been living with a secret. What begins as a quiet evening of driving for Pick Up (the latest car service to share the road with Uber and Lyft), turns into a life changing journey filled with conversations about life, sex, stigma, and guilt, as Jesse falls for one of his passengers and is forced to confess the truth.
The “gay best friend”, an age-old trope, has been done in countless films and television series. Ranging from one-note (Sex and the City's Stanford and Mario) to nuanced (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's Tituss), the gay best friend exists to support and advise the main protagonist, with their conflicts swept to the side.
Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion is a fan-favorite, as are some of the more science fiction angled movies like 28 Days Later or World War Z. I recently watched the 1995 Wolfgang Peterson-directed movie, Outbreak for the first time, which is currently available on Netflix.
After the 2018 surprising hit "A Quiet Place" brought something fresh to the horror genre, the announcement of a sequel may have been disappointing to some. A lot of the time, a sequel to an already successful movie is no where near as good as the original. Yet, John Krasinski once again shows that he's much more than Jim from The Office.
The social issues The Half of it takes on are handled well, between the antagonization brought on to Ellie for her race and the conflict that arises from her being gay. Both aspects of her character are built up over the course of the film and don’t seem abrupt or rushed. The film shows racism towards Ellie and her and father in varying levels, from having her schoolmates specifically address her as "Chinese girl” to the fore mentioned way her Dad is treated due to language barriers. The same can be said about Ellie being a lesbian. While she never truly “comes out” in the narrative, that does not undermine her journey of self-discovery from being meaningful. These ideas aren’t thrust upon the viewer in a preachy manor, the scenarios that occur feel believable given the rural setting. The film presents watchers with problems whom those like Ellie may face, and leaves us to sit with them and reflect.
All in all, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged is a film I would recommend. It promotes the bond of sisterhood, which in this case is clearly thicker than blood, as well as courage. No one truly knows how strong they are until they go through something unimaginable and come out changed for the better.
Korean culture shines in this Canadian export.
