The Square -- Film Review

As in James M. Cain's best stories, illicit love drags a disappointed, unexceptional man to dark doings in "The Square," an ultra-amplified exercise in noir. There's no question that director Nash Edgerton knows how to ratchet up the tension and create an atmosphere of dread. What's missing, in this tale of an adulterous couple in the sunny Sydney suburbs, is a compelling sexual engine to spark the narrative machine. Ultimately more concerned with plot mechanics than character, the film succumbs to an overload of twists.