BY WESLEY MOOTS, CONTRIBUTOR

After a power boating accident leaves his wife comatose, Matt King (George Clooney) has to find a way to be a father to his two daughters, handle a major business deal amidst his cousins and come to grips with the fact that his wife may not recover.

The movie delivers a fantastic performance from most of the staff and grants a deep look into many of the characters. This is one of the few films I’ve seen where any character proves to be completely two dimensional.

The directing of the movie takes the acting and makes it shine with some great camera work and a nice pace to the plot.

My only complaint about the movie, and the only thing I think keeps it from being a perfect 10 as a drama, is the sound editing.

The sound itself is great. It carries well with the mood, using minor keys in all the right places; however the editing of the sound could have been done far better.

During some of the more dramatic scenes, the sound score is set much more loudly than it should have been and thus damaged the emotional state the actors and director did so well at portraying.

I’m not normally a fan of dramas, though I have enjoyed some of Clooney’s work in recent years, but when I heard it said that this was his best performance yet and the film won an Oscar for best writing, I felt compelled to see it. I do not know if it will be the best drama to be released this year, but I have to say that this is the best film I have seen this month.

Every great drama has a quote that can help it to stand out and define the situation, and this movie is no exception.

King sums up his entire life’s problem in his line, “My family feels like an archipelago, all part of the same group, but all separate and all slowly drifting apart.”

I recommend this movie to anyone who has lost a spouse or mother, felt that there is more to themselves than most people acknowledge or just wants to see a film that portrays how real people handle a situation and find hope in a bad situation.