The Killing Of Two Lovers - Movie Review

Critics Score - 8 of 10

General Audience Score - 7 of 10

The Killing Of Two Lovers is a tense drama/thriller that really isn’t getting the attention it deserves. At 1 hour and 24 minutes, this movie keeps up a great pace and tension for the duration of the film. You’d be hard pressed to find a better cinematic experience among the new releases available.

PROS - With the institution of marriage under attack from the stressful lifestyle of our modern world, divorce rates are sky high with over half of all marriages ending. The ramifications of these broken homes spirals down into the disruption of the lives of any children as well as family and friends of the couple. The Killing Of Two Lovers throws us headfirst into the middle of such a chaotic incident. The acting is terrific, the score is inventive and compelling, and it also has some nice visual styling. But where the movie is at it’s best is in the tension it creates. The tension is as tight as a violin’s strings, perhaps crossbow would be a better analogy for this particular film. 

We pick up with our married couple having already been separated an undisclosed amount of time. The husband, David (Clayne Crawford), discovers his wife, Nikki (Sepideh Moafi) is having an affair with Derek (Chris Coy). And although they’ve tentatively agreed it’s ok to see other people??, they’re also trying to work things out for the sake of their 3 elementary school age sons and teenage daughter Jess (Avery Pizzuto). The acting is across the board pretty excellent considering we’ve never seen most of these actors before. But the emotional weight the performances deliver, especially from Crawford, hits home with some real power right from the get go and never relents. As the movie’s title suggests, David is less than impressed with his wife’s infidelity and the threat of murder hangs thick in the air, like a dense fog that permeates the film. While David clearly wants to be a good father and is desperately trying to hold it together and win back his wife, we’re mostly left to guess at how much Nikki really wants to salvage this relationship. Eventually we also discover that Derek is actively trying to win the affections of Nikki and put the nail in the proverbial coffin to her and David’s marriage. And the daughter Jess just wants what we as the audience what, nothing more than to see these two souls in pain reconnect and become a family again. Is that really too much to ask?

By the conclusion of the film, we already know things are gonna get messy, but just like a floundering marriage, there’s about a million different ways it can go down. And while the film doesn’t have any hard hitting topics it’s trying to tackle, it does offer some commentary on the issues that arise within the dynamics of marital relationships. While the story hinges on David, ultimately all these characters are flawed and at times solely focused on serving their own self interests, which leads to some serious mistakes. Unfortunately for anyone married or in a romantic relationship currently or formerly, many of these mistakes and character flaws hit closer to home than you’d prefer. But the love David has for Nikki, sometimes overriding reason, the love they both have for their kids and then the kids love for their parents, encapsulated by Jess, are the real motivational forces driving this runaway train headed for a precipice. The sound design adds some intriguing dimension to the situations although a bit confusing, I was often wondering if David’s truck was causing some of the noise. And while the writing is perfectly adequate, it’s visually very well constructed with some nice long takes, but never really stunning. But the performances, especially by Crawford, do a good part of the heavy lifting for the film.

SUMMARY - The Killing Of Two Lovers is well worth a watch, it’s short runtime and quick pace make it an easy film to view. The anxiety present right out of the gate will keep you there right until the finale to see if it’s just the Two Lovers that ultimately end up getting Killed.