Movie Review: One Week

Seeing as though it was recently Canada Day, and I find myself missing Canada, it seemed like an appropriate time to review another fairly unknown (at least on this side of the northern border) Canadian movie. It was one that I was about to initially flip quickly to another station, but something made me watch just a moment or two longer. And then, slightly longer than that, as well.

Here is yet another movie that I just kind of happened to stumble upon accidentally while going through the Canadian channels. It was the middle of the movie, and somehow, there was something about it that made me keep watching.

I did not know it at the time, but it was a good movie. And a Canadian movie, one that I had never heard of before, admittedly. So, it stayed on, and I watched the rest of the movie right to the end, enjoying it, and determined to try and see it again.

While looking for it, it seemed like a decent idea to maybe check Youtube, with hopes of running into good luck. Sure enough, it is available there to see, in decent quality and commercial free. So, I watched it again, this time from the beginning, and going all the way through.

Having seen it in it's entirety, it is even better with the second viewing. 

It is a quiet movie, if you will. What I mean by that is that it is cerebral, indirectly asking tough questions about life and mortality and priorities. In other words, this is not another movie with a ton of explosions and non-stop action. This may sound like a strange thing to say,  but in all honesty, I met a man who is older than me who found that any movie that was not basically constant action bored him. Not surprisingly, he liked those Michael Bay Transformers movies which, to me, were among the worst major motion pictures in history, the ones that were thin on any actual story line to help the movie along, but indeed had explosions and special effects and then some.

What is this movie? Thoughtful, introspective. A movie about a young man who gets cancer without knowing precisely why. It clearly gives him a jolt, and he decides to do something, or rather some things in the plural, that he has never done before.

We follow him as he uncharacteristically goes across his country of Canada, on an exploratory journey. He tries to clear his head, and come to terms with his own mortality, the possibility that life might not last very long. It is one week of his life, albeit a key week, as he drives across his enormous country, from Toronto all the way to the Pacific Coast of British Columbia. 

This is a good, thought-provoking movie, and I would recommend it, so long as people know to expect an emotional and intelligent movie. Recommended!