A Beginner's Guide to Endings

A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO ENDINGS:
Duke White (played by Harvey Keitel) has led a life where he can’t resist betting on the odds. During his life of gambling, Duke wasn’t a good father to his 5 sons as he used them to help gain more money to do more gambling. Years ago when 3 of his sons where young Duke signed them up for a drug test that turned out to be fatal for anyone that took the pills. After spending the settlement money that his sons would have received, Duke is riddled with guilt knowing that his addiction was going to be the cause of his sons deaths. His only way to solve this problem is to kill himself before letting his sons know they are going to die.

THE END IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END:
A Beginner’s Guide to Endings was a nice change of pace for me for movies. I’ve been watching so many action movies that seem to be nothing but how much can we blow up while having lots of shootouts and car chases that I need a slower, character driven movie. Which this movie is all about the 5 brothers who are all pretty crazy but the main characters are the 3 brothers that have been told they are going to die. From all the descriptions I read on the movie they make it seem like Harvey Keitel’s character Duke is the main character but he’s only the narrator at the beginning and end of the movie that tells all the information needed to know to understand what was happening up to that point.

Plot wise this movie isn’t anything new but it is well written and has a good flow to it. When it first started I figured it would be a little too much having 6 main characters and then who knew how many supporting characters would be showing up but if there where any more or any fewer characters used it would have been too confusing. Though what this movie is really about is how the brothers react to the news of their impending deaths. Each brother has a different response to this news, one creates a list, one tries to protect his other brother he never protected, and one decides to settle down.

This is a wonky movie, but it’s a good wonky. There’s a lot going on in this movie with the all 5 characters experiencing a day of some crazy events. It’s a fun movie to watch and has a good cast, even though Harvey Keitel and J.K. Simmons is only in it for a little amount of time. Director Jonathan Sobol wrote this as well where it blends comedy with a odd serious side to it as well. It seems like he was trying to be more serious with the tone by having the brothers coping with their feelings but that side of the story is undeveloped compared to the events that the characters go through. The story is more focused on what they each do during their first day of knowing they are going to die rather than on how they feel about it. A Beginner’s Guide to Endings wasn’t one of the most odd quirky movies I’ve seen but for Sobol’s first time he does a decent job at crating a entertaining movie.