Blow the Man Down (2019)

By Peter McGinn

I was led to watch this on the recommendation of a couple friends. They liked it and mentioned it was set in our home state of Maine. I guess I wasn’t as impressed with it as much as they were, for I only finished watching it because of that recommendation and the Maine connection. I write novels, so I suppose plotting matters to me for that reason, and I had some difficulty from nearly the beginning here. When you have two cops in this small town investigating a crime energetically (at least by one of them — the other was a little more folksy about it), it doesn’t quite wash with me that the same police would turn a blind eye to a house of prostitution for decades. And there is vagueness here: vague threats, mysterious references to the past, motivations are hinted at but not defined. It reminds me of a Bob Dylan song, whose lyrics often reveal more by the details he leaves out. But that works better with a five-minute song than with a 90 minute movie. Anyway, it doesn’t seem like it wouldn’t have taken much to greatly improve the film. If you are looking for mood and a distraction while doing g something else like — I dondon’t know, housework or phone texting or internet surfing, the movie might intrigue you, but less so if you sit down with popcorn and really dig into the logic and the complexities of the story.