Category: Film Reviews

UK site HeyUGuys has reviewed Smashed and I’ve posted part of it below. Hit the link to read the review in full:

Winstead will probably be best known to most for her performances in films such as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Die Hard 4.0, The Thing and Final Destination 3. She’s always given the impression that she’s an actress with a great deal of talent, even if she’s rarely been given much to sink her teeth into here. Kudos then to Smashed director James Ponsoldt who saw enough raw ability in Winstead to hand her the challenging lead role of Kate Hannah.

The film comes in at a slender 81 minutes, so it’s clear this was never meant to be a comprehensive breakdown of addiction and recovery. We join and leave Kate at moments that feel like they could be occurring in the middle of her story.

Sometimes that’s to the film’s detriment. We get hints at Kate’s back story that feel jarringly unexplored, and skipping past stages in the recovery process often feel convenient as they surely would have been the most challenging to portray on screen. The main focus therefore falls on Kate’s relationship with Charlie, and as their relationship and Kate’s career start to crumble there’s an interesting thread about how the honesty that comes with sobriety can be just as destructive as the initial dependency.

For what it sets out to achieve and the amount it chooses to portray, Smashed does a solid job – made all the more notable thanks to Winstead. From her heartbreakingly raw and fearless scenes as an unwieldy drunkard, to those with pain, anguish and struggle etched onto her face as a now sober young woman all too aware that her life is falling apart around her, Winstead loudly announces that there’s a lot more to her than simply being the love interest of a Vampire Hunter. Aided by a similarly strong supporting cast (which includes Megan Mullally, Octavia Spencer and a wonderful turn from Nick Offerman), Winstead doesn’t expose Smashed, but rather garners it more credit and attention than perhaps it would otherwise have deserved.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

Digital Spy has reviewed Smashed and wrote that Mary impresses in the “raw drama”:

Winstead is fearless, playing a variation on her ‘good girl’ persona that feels absolutely real and painfully relatable – you needn’t have any experience with substance addiction to identity with her struggle. But beyond the terror of what the addiction does to Kate physically and emotionally, it’s her slow process of coming to terms with reality that gives the story both its sadness and its strength. Because we like Kate and Charlie, and their relationship genuinely seems to be grounded in love, we want them to be able to work through their problems.

Ponsoldt tells his poignant, honest story in unsentimental strokes, and his script is both sharply observed and consistently surprising. He offers just enough in the way of backstory to add shading to Winstead’s already nuanced performance, with a childhood weight issue referenced early on and Kate’s unashamedly boozy mother (Mary Kay Place) making a charged appearance later in the film.

Smashed is a smart, sensitive and appropriately uncomfortable watch, offering an unrelentingly clear-eyed view of dependence, both emotional and substance-based.

A couple of new Smashed reviews have been posted online, praising Mary’s performance in the film. The first review is from the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

There will never be another Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor, but Hollywood may have found a new Lee Remick in Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Like Remick, Winstead could pass for a cheerleader (as she was outfitted in Quentin Tarantino’s half of “Grindhouse”). But behind the pretty face is a brave actress, and “Smashed” is her answer to “The Days of Wine and Roses.”

Winstead plays Kate, an elementary school teacher who lives in a hipster enclave of Los Angeles with husband Charlie (Aaron Paul of “Breaking Bad,” who may be the new Ben Foster). The Sundance-approved script by writer-director James Ponsoldt doesn’t waste time charting their downward spiral or its causes — by the time we meet them, Kate and Charlie are already falling down drunk.

While Kate’s embrace of AA (where the confessors include Octavia Spencer) is a bit too quick, Winstead strikes a believably ambivalent note about whether her youthful exuberance is a bad thing.

The JCOnline also loved Mary’s performance in the film:

The performance of Mary Elizabeth Winstead as a young alcoholic battling to get and remain sober elevates “Smashed” from clichéd underpinnings.Winstead’s vulnerability, turmoil and pain as she faces the challenges of beginning a new life without the crutch of booze are heartbreaking as well as courageous.

Hollywood has had a long history of movies about drunks from “A Star Is Born” to “The Lost Weekend,” from “I’ll Cry Tomorrow” to “Days of Wine and Roses.”

And many cover the same areas: the denial, the loneliness, the inner turmoil and self-loathing. “Smashed” displays many of these familiar themes as well.

Yet Winstead’s performance overcomes the familiarity as we watch her downward spiral and her climb to redemption.

 

Screen Crush gave Mary’s performance in Smashed an amazing review. Click on the link to read the review in full. Below are some highlights:

‘Smashed’ is a film that hits home with ferocity. It’s a quiet little indie film that utilizes subtle direction to invoke the dizzying feeling of drunkenness, but it’s Winstead’s performance that reaches directly into your gut and twists with precision. The way she manipulates her voice when drunk almost sounds monstrous and inhuman — it’s startlingly authentic. The addiction takes over and the addiction does what it wants. It’s pure, irrational Id, encompassing their lives and driving them to do things like pee on gas station floors or smoke crack when a stranger offers it.

‘Smashed’ may only be a movie, but it’s one with a pounding heart that beats from a place that is genuine and honest — so honest, that it hurts to watch. Winstead, like the alcoholic she portrays, becomes an entirely different person, making her performance doubly impressive given that she must essentially play two roles — sober Kate and addict Kate — and be equally convincing as both. A film like this may be overlooked in awards season, but I don’t think it matters — what matters with a movie that speaks to the human experience in such a specific way as this is that it is seen and appreciated, but moreover, that there are those who can and will strongly identify with it, and hopefully it speaks to them the way it spoke to me. And no trophy is going to mean anything to those people.