"Trust" is a romantic drama/thriller/comedy with some interesting twists, but has what appears to be a terrible tacked-on ending.
We start by meeting Brooke (Victoria Justice) and Owen (Matthew Daddario), a married couple who live one of those idyllic New York lives that only exists in movies -- she is opening an art gallery and he is a reporter on a news TV station. She has entered in an agreement with a young Irish artist Ansgar (Lucien Laviscount), who -- in another "only in movies" situation -- is such a hot artist that people want to spend loads of money to buy his paintings. Ansger also is one of those artists who is irresistible to women and sleeps with anyone he wants. It's the week before Christmas, and Owen wants to go to Paris with Brooke to spend Christmas there and try to start a family. She tells him she has too much work to do, so they can't. However, Ansgar has discovered that some rich guy wants to spend a huge amount of money buying his paintings, and they need to fly to Paris to meet him. Owen is, understandably, sort of crushed that Brooke won't go to Paris with him, but will with Ansgar. She assures him that it's all business, but he has his concerns. Ditto for Brooke, who has seen Owen get texts from odd women and sees his interns fawn all over him at work.
Brooke leaves for Paris, and Owen goes out to a bar with his friend. And while Brooke is over in Paris with Ansgar, Owen meets Amy (Kat McNamara), a journalism student who recognizes him from his work and is clearly showing interest beyond just journalism. And from that point on, things start to get complicated ...
"Trust" is a pretty entertaining way to spend 90 minutes, with one huge caveat. The acting is good and the story is intriguing, it's got some interesting twists and is nicely time twisty in that it circles back and fills in gaps in the story in a pretty satisfying way. A bit of a problem is that the movie just doesn't make you root for Owen and Brooke as a couple, which hurts because when the the tensions start to build we're not as invested as we should be. And they made a critical mistake in so clearly showing us Ansger's art, which is clearly awful. Also, it's also a bit of an odd combination of a male fantasy (married to Victoria Justice and then Katherine McNamara hits on you ... I mean, wow, where do I sign up for that...) and a serious fears of waned trust and infidelity.
The biggest problem, though, is the ending. The last minute of the film completely destroys everything that came before it. I cannot imagine what the filmmakers were thinking. Trust me -- when you watch the movie, at the end, when they are looking at the tickets to Paris, the film fades to black. Turn it off at that fade-out, or fast forward one minute to the credits. That last minute -- which reeks of a studio insisted last minute addition -- betrays all that came before it. Skip that last minute, and it's an immeasurably better movie. But still worth checking out.
