The Loft

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Erik Van Looy/Starring: Karl Urban, James Marsden, Wentworth Miller, Eric Stonestreet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Isabel Lucas and Rachael Taylor

The murder/mystery The Loft, which tells the story of five friends who find a murdered woman in the loft they co-own and share for extramarital trysts, is so overcrowded with red-herrings and inexplicable lapses in logic that by the final half-hour, one is overcome with exhaustion. And with that weary exasperation comes a powerful indifference to the characters and the outcome. The beginning isn't bad, the middle falters some then the end staggers into some sort of unsatisfying resolution.

Karl Urban (on leave from Star Trek, where he makes a terrific Dr. McCoy) plays Vincent Stevens, an architect of some renown who, with his other pals Chris (James Marsden), Luke (Wentworth Miller), Marty (Eric Stonestreet), and Phillip (Matthias Schoenaerts; how he suffered slum free-fall from the film Rust and Bone is anybody's guess), agree to share said loft in a building of his own design. The film views their philandering as a matter-of-fact, which is just how the friends view the loft. Vincent offers it as a safe alternative to potentially compromising hotel rooms. He presents each of his friends with a key, which comes with some basic loft rules; one is that each owner must alert the others when it is to be used and another is that its existence be kept from everyone not part of the circle.

The film begins with an interrogation, as some of the friends sit before detectives, reluctantly fielding questions. We discover soon after that a blonde woman lays bloody in the loft bed. Luke is the first to discover her and after a moment of shock, he quickly contacts the others. Before long, the friends are all gathered and looking askance at one another; leveling accusations and trying to decide on a course of action.
The woman's identity isn't immediately revealed, which is supposed to be a sly attempt to create suspense--and further the mystery.

The story backtracks a year (as these films tend to do) to give us a sense of how the friends became embroiled in such a mess.
We see the five men in attendance at Phillip's wedding. Phillip's wild, volatile nature makes him unlikely candidate for marriage but his personality will later incriminate him. The other men are not unlike Phillip; dudes with raging libidos, always prowling for members of the opposite sex.

Chris eyes a blonde bombshell named Anne (Rachael Taylor), who happens to be the lover of a prominent city official. Anne's blonde hair immediately qualifies her to be the dead woman on the bed or is it another red herring? The two begin a heated affair, and to complicate matters, he falls in love with her.

Their wives register as mostly dull shrews, particularly Chris' wife Allison (Rhona Mitra), whose humorless severity alone makes her a suspect. The only wife with any personality is Marty's, who seems to be more flesh and blood than the others.

A key sequence in the film involves Vincent, Luke and Marty as they meet in San Diego for fun and frolics. During a night out at a bar, Vincent meets his own blonde object of desire; a woman named Sarah (Isabel Lucas), which also leads to a torrid affair that will impact not only on his marriage but his friendships as well.

While the men argue in the present about what to do about the dead girl and whether to contact the police, one of them discovers a message written in blood on the bed stand; a Latin phrase that translates to "fate will unite us;" a cryptic message whose meaning eventually becomes clear.
The use of Latin is useful, plot-wise, for it serves as yet another red herring when Phillip's father-in-law just happens to use Latin casually in conversation. It is a coincidence that is too coincidental, which makes the diversionary tactic easily dismissible.

It eventually becomes known that Vincent was in the loft the day before the murder, which quickly positions him as the chief suspect though again, such a revelation would oversimplify the plot. We know the culprit's identity lay elsewhere.

The woman's identity is eventually made known to the group (and us), which should make it easy to assign guilt. But again, that would be too easy.
As the police question the friends and the corpse threatens to ruin their lives, it comes to light that Luke had been secretly taping the trysts; which naturally invites the wrath of the others. Though the footage of Vincent's visit should, in effect, solve the mystery, the plot conveniently calls for Luke to have not recorded the tryst. And why would a friend record his best friends' sexual adventures? That bit of expository business is revealed later, which will damn one of the friends and provide motivation for the retribution they eventually seek.

As the messiness begins to unravel, we come closer to a resolution as the the truth behind the mystery is laid bare. Though it comes as a surprise, it isn't a particularly interesting or all that plausible. It is merely one component in a narrative that is mechanically conceived and executed.

The denouement proves to be something of an anticlimax. My eyebrows started to feel heavy as the story began to drag on.

I didn't care enough about any of the characters to really care about the story, which in many ways is nonsensical. Van Looy fails to establish any kind of suspense nor does create situations that feel like the real world.

For men who are supposed to be educated, they behave in ways noone with even a small clump of brain matter would. While staring at the dead body, a few of the friends start messing with the crime scene though most people would have the good sense to leave it uncompromised. And why would anyone befriend such a vile human being like Marty, who wears his misogyny like a gaudy tie and who can't seem to open his mouth without something offensive spilling out? But then again, how many men in the story can be said to have redeeming virtues, or even one? It isn't an imperative that characters be likeable but how many of the characters in this film make for intriguing scoundrels? Many questions and yet, I wasn't interested enough to want to know the answers.

The Loft proves to be nothing more than a shoddily constructed mystery/thriller. A group of friends confronted with a dead woman isn't a new plot device. I was reminded of the equally inane film, Very Bad Things, where a celebration in Las Vegas leads to a woman's death. At least that film was played for laughs.

Maybe it's time to retire this threadbare, cliched premise.

The film will languish, no doubt in theaters until it surfaces on DVD or streaming in the not-too distant future. Unless you can't bear to not know how it all ends, I wouldn't wait around for it.