“Zipper” was at Sundance this year and is now ready for theatrical release, although I honestly can’t imagine why it was included in the festival or got a distributor. Patrick Wilson (“Fargo”) plays a southern prosecutor with political aspirations who gets caught up in sex addiction with a high-priced call girl service – one that he ends up investigating.
Unfortunately, it sounds a lot more interesting (and sexy) than it actually is. Director and screenwriter Mora Stephens (“Conventioneers”) doesn’t give us enough to make us care about Wilson or his family, nor does she ever help us understand the psychological reasons for his addictive meltdown. So, all we’re left with is watching him have sex with prostitutes, get really obsessive about it, and get caught.
Amazing how boring all of that can be when nothing is done to help us care about the stakes. Sex addiction within the political world is worth exploring on screen, but I failed to notice any insights in this film.
The only truly interesting part of the film is a slight twist at the end involving the prosecutor’s wife. I like Wilson as an actor a lot, but this film does him no favors. The best performances are given by the actress playing his wife – Lena Headey (“Game of Thrones”) – and Ray Winstone (“Snow White and the Huntsman”) as a journalist. John Cho, Dianna Agron, and Richard Dreyfuss are completely wasted with so little screen time that you wonder why they agreed to do it.
“Zipper” opens in theaters and on demand Fri., Aug. 28, 2015.
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