Jenna Walter
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
Kayden
This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
SnoopyStyle
White Mike (Chace Crawford) is a former rich kid. His family lost their fortune after his late mother's cancer battle. He became a drug dealer to the rich kids from the Upper East Side. He buys from Lionel (50 Cent) in Harlem. His girlfriend Molly Norton (Emma Roberts) comes from a poorer family and doesn't know about his drug dealing. His cousin Charlie is high on the new drug Twelve. Mike, Hunter McCullough, and Charlie are best friends since childhood. Charlie tries to rob Lionel and gets shot. Lionel also kills Nana who witnessed the shooting. There's a party at the home of nerd Chris Kenton (Rory Culkin). Queen Bee Sara Ludlow, Gabby (Zoë Kravitz), Jessica Brayson (Emily Meade) are some of the rich young people attending. Chris' unstable older brother Claude comes home going AWOL from his boot camp school.Joel Schumacher seems to be inspired by Gossip Girl and not in a good way. There are too many characters and too much story which keeps piling on in the first act. I don't usually like narrations but that many characters do need somebody to keep track. This is over-stuffed and a mess. At least, there are lots of pretty young people. It doesn't make this any good.
winopaul
This is a very nice update of Breakfast Club with a big enough budget to be in more than one room. It studies the community effects of one sociopath and one psychopath. It also moves the action from Shermer to New York City. This and the time change to 2010 comes with a commensurate increase in decadence, narcissism, and the meaninglessness of the young lives.Don't look for any kids hanging out at the library or studying for the SAT. Either they don't care or are legacies that can get into Harvard. You can see they would all fit in and would go on to function as successful finance types, real estate agents, and crony tycoons. This is the future of America, learn to enjoy it.The ending kinda surprised me. I assume it had to be a bit of a happy ending for the distributors to pick it up. The problem with the ending is that it implies that sociopaths can get better, whereas psychopaths are doomed. The exact opposite is true.The only character you can care about is Julia Robert's niece. That is a lesson in and of itself. You have to wonder whether she is as much an insufferable narcissist as the roles played by all the other characters. She does come off as "marry that gal" sweet. Heck, maybe sweet little Miss Roberts is the real sociopath in the movie, knowing exactly how to act to hurt people. Who is she to take away the chosen profession of Mike? He was a darn good drug dealer, despite being a sociopath himself. Maybe that's why Miss Roberts has to change him.Its just a delightful movie. After watching it you can think "God, I'm glad I'm nothing like anyone in this flick". The voice-over narration puts you in a Kafka mood, so it is perfect to look down on all these characters. Maybe that is the ultimate narcissism, that of the audience looking at this little slice of privileged Americana and thinking we are better than it.I do cringe a little at the narration. It would be a good film school project to suck this into Sony Vegas and edit out all the voice-over, replacing it with Chopin in one instance, and gangster rap in another, and then send it out for test.The movie also comes with its own ready-made remake. You could move the whole thing to Hollywood. Then instead of the mystery drug "Twelve" the addictive substance would be celebrity. Millennials say they would rather be famous than rich, so this should do well in the treasured young demo. The remake of this movie would be about the Hollywood casting of this movie. You can show every single character on the casting couch with Bill Cosby, trying to get a part in the movie within the movie.It works on so many levels. Instead of the psychopath buffed-out kid that resembles Martin Sheen you could cast the really crazy Charlie Sheen. Instead of indiscriminate murder, he could get the other actor's agents to drop them, which is pretty much like dying when you are in Hollywood. And in a nice tie-in, you can get Ashton Kutcher to play the sociopath drug-dealer, who did resemble him, after all. Its a bit against type for Ashton, so he would love to do it. He can bring in enough product placements to finance the whole project, so that's a big plus.To top it off, get the real Julia Roberts instead of her niece. Now you've got some star power going. And no mamby pamby happy ending. Have Charlie Sheen drop a dog off a parking deck. (I watched "What Just Happened" right before this.) But we do need to get some box office, so have him go into recovery and get better, or at least a little less crazy. Ashton can continue to hurt people, ultimately getting Julia dropped by her agency, sending her into a spiral of drug and alcohol dependency. With this combination of cynicism and star power, I'm thinking Palme d'Or, baby. The room, its electric. Send in the writers.
jatng2012
Movie is based on the fast life. and losses and I don't know why it got such a low rating. but these movie was played very well. with good actors. even 50 cent did a very good job. Over all for me is 10/10. I found it to be very well played and at least these movie was not turned into junky suicide kind of movie it ended very well for me I would of like the ending to shown the after a couple years in so as most movies do but it had a nice ending so can't complain.I recommended these movie to any one who is young between 16-25 is not much of action but more like a story about a none drug user who sells pot and has a tragic lost and things go wrong but is more then you can ask for.
Argemaluco
I had some curiosity in watching Twelve, director Joel Schumacher's most recent film, because even though many people identify this director with his most notorious failures (Batman Forever and Batman & Robin), I think that when he worked with the correct material and actors, he could make very solid films (like The Lost Boys, Veronica Guerin and Tigerland).Unfortunately, Twelve belongs to the list of Schumacher's bad films. This movie is basically an affected and pretentious rehash of the TV series Gossip Girl seasoned with an artificial "gangsta" taste, irritating dialogs and pathetic performances. Oh, and instead of Kristen Bell's voice as the omnipresent narrator from Gossip Girl, we have Kiefer Sutherland's unmistakable voice bringing forced pseudo-philosophical monologues which try to bring gravity to the characters' puerile lives.To start with, the emotions evoked by Twelve feel forced, and I found its characters to be absolutely irritating. The screenplay does not have a point, and I never had even a remote interest in the main character's salvation or failure.In conclusion, Twelve is an atrocious film which genuinely made me feel like wasting my time. In other words, don't make the same mistake I did, and avoid this film.
