'No Good Deed' Reviews: Film Performs Well at Box Office
New movie release "No Good Deed" did very well at its box office opening weekend, despite the theme's untimely resemblance to domestic violence issues that have been in recent headlines.
Sony' new picture stars Idris Elba and Taraji P. Henson in the home invasion scary movie. The film has already done very well, earning $24.5 million in its first weekend, according to Forbes. This is nearly double what it cost to make the $13.5 million-budget film.
Just before the film's release, Sony caused a bit of a stir when it pulled all last-minute press screenings of the film. The studio said it was to keep any plot twists a secret for general audiences. Critics still caught the film Friday with everyone else and unsurprisingly were not too kind to the picture.
"It's just another stalker mystery in which impending danger is too obviously telegraphed by thunder claps and malfunctioning car alarms," Washington Post critic Jen Cheney wrote. "The characters only vaguely resemble actual people, and even charismatic actors such as Elba and Henson, an Academy Award nominee and Howard University alum, can't elevate the material into anything worth taking seriously."
Despite there actually being a twist in the "No Good Deed" plot (which won't be revealed here), other speculation is that Sony pulled the screenings to the press to calm worries about the overlap between Elba stalking, beating and terrorizing Henson and the recent Ray Rice domestic violence situation.
Whatever their motivation, Sony's audiences still turned out to support "No Good Deed" in theaters, with or without critics' recommendations.
As Forbes contributor Scott Mendelson writes, "'No Good Deed' is breaking out for the simplest of reasons: It's a straight-up genre picture that just happens to feature two very popular black actors in the lead roles that doesn't necessarily require either of them to be black."
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