Sunday 30 November 2014

Grand Piano (2013)

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Tagline:  Play or die
Cusack plays: Clem

From the trailers I've watched we're now moving into a fairly gun heavy phase of the Cusack Challenge...

Grand Piano is a Hitchcock inspired high suspense thriller, which sees concert pianist Tom (Elijah Wood) prepare to make his comeback after suffering stage fright and a breakdown in the past.  His wife, friends and family assemble in the audience but moments before he begins he finds a note written on the sheet music - "Play one wrong note and you die"  (DUM DUM DUMMM!)

The mysterious Clem is armed with a gun trained on him, and if he plays just one note wrong people are going to get hurt. Speaking to him through an ear piece he delivers his demands and starts to act on his threats as Tom tries to call for help.

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Cusack is largely off screen in this role as the threatening voice, ably assisted by an accomplice (in the shape of Bill from Bill and Ted!). The film gallops along, and is a brisk 90 minutes running time (10 of which are pretty piano music over the credits), so it's a good pick when you don't have much time to fit in a film. However the speed with which they deal with some of the events and sorta silly reasoning for Cusack's demands, meant I had to go back and rewatch part of it.

So overall, nothing groundbreaking but  certainly worth a watch.

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