Good Boy - 2025 movie

With most films, I don't find it too difficult to make up my mind about whether I enjoyed them or not. The other day, for instance, I watched Christopher Nolan's much-lauded film Oppenheimer. I admire Nolan as a film-maker and I'd been saving it up for a treat. But for all its merits (and the brilliance of its stellar cast) I was disappointed, because for me it was over-long and focused far too much on aspects of the story that I didn't much care about. The key issue in the story surely concerns the moral pros and cons of Oppenheimer's work on the bomb, but the endless debate about whether or not he should retain his security clearance in the mid-50s seemed tediously overblown. A minority view, I realise.

Jan Komasa's recent film Good Boy, on the other hand, left me genuinely unsure. It's described as a blend of psychological thriller and black comedy, though there isn't too much humour, black or any other kind, in my opinion. I had no idea which way the story was heading, and the eventual finale came as a a real surprise. This should be a big plus, but I'm doubtful about that, because I didn't find the resolution convincing.

The film begins unattractively, with a deeply unpleasant young man called Tommy (Anson Boon) misbehaving in various depressing ways before we switch to a job interview between mild-mannered Chris (the versatile and talented Stephen Graham) and Rina (Monica Frajczyk). He's recruiting a maid, btu his manner is troubling. But Rina, a migrant worker, is desperate, so she takes the job. Chris, it turns out, lives in a remote mansion with his deeply troubled wife Kathryn (Andrea Riseborough, also highly accomplished) and their son Jonathan. But Rina soon discovers that someone else is living in the cellar. This is Tommy, and he's chained up.

Very odd, and things get odder still as the story develops and Tommy's attitude towards his captors evolves. I can't say much more without giving too much away, but although I think this is a film with significant flaws, it held my attention from start to finish, in a way that Oppenheimer, so superior in some ways, failed to do.