The biggest problem with Ashes is the casting of Ray Winstone. He plays Frank an advanced Alzheimer's sufferer stuck in a nursing home. He was once a hard man, a type of person Winstone has been playing since the late 1970s.
One day his son James (Jim Sturgess) comes to visit him in the nursing home and then for some inexplicable reason takes him away. It has to be more than the nursing home being not that good.
As Jim drives away with Frank, an haphazard road journey shifts the film into a different direction.
Jim has been forced into his actions and he is not Frank's son. JB (Luke Evans) is actually Frank's son and seems to behind all this. Somewhere among Frank's erratic behaviour and violent outbursts, he remembers the person he once was, a nasty man, a wife beater something that affected JB so much that he has taken a drastic step.
Ashes is a flat inert and incomprehensible film. It becomes a dark thriller in its second half, the slow reveal as Frank during more lucid moments remembers what he did all those years ago comes as no surprise because of the casting. I even guessed that James was not his son. It does beg the question who put Frank in the nursing home and whose details they had for his next of kin?
One day his son James (Jim Sturgess) comes to visit him in the nursing home and then for some inexplicable reason takes him away. It has to be more than the nursing home being not that good.
As Jim drives away with Frank, an haphazard road journey shifts the film into a different direction.
Jim has been forced into his actions and he is not Frank's son. JB (Luke Evans) is actually Frank's son and seems to behind all this. Somewhere among Frank's erratic behaviour and violent outbursts, he remembers the person he once was, a nasty man, a wife beater something that affected JB so much that he has taken a drastic step.
Ashes is a flat inert and incomprehensible film. It becomes a dark thriller in its second half, the slow reveal as Frank during more lucid moments remembers what he did all those years ago comes as no surprise because of the casting. I even guessed that James was not his son. It does beg the question who put Frank in the nursing home and whose details they had for his next of kin?