12 Awesome Performances In Otherwise Awful 2016 Movies

Critically acclaimed Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Vallée’s latest offering Demolition stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Wall Street investment banker Davis who realises the emptiness of his existence after he is involved in a car crash that kills his wife. To cope with his grief, Davis starts writing angry customer complaint letters to a vending machine company that denied him a candy bar while recovering in hospital, eventually striking up a friendship with the company’s customer service representative Karen (Naomi Watts) and her teenaged son, and taking the film’s title quite literally he begins demolishing things around him, including bulldozing his own home.

Supposedly it’s some quirky exploration of how people process grief centred around having to metaphorically take apart your life in order to rebuild it (or something like that), but really the movie ends up a muddled mess that feels as empty as its protagonist. Gyllenhaal is great though going from Patrick Bateman-esque businessman at the start to grieving widower, but it’s unfortunately not enough to save the movie from the doldrums.