How Many Failed Films Do You Get to Direct Before You Stop Being Promising?

The Upside of Anger is another in an ongoing series of muddled failures from director Mike Binder who, after directing over a half-dozen films, still doesn't understand how to find a consistent tone for his work. He has cast his new film expertly. Joan Allen rages, rants, and dominates the screen in a performance that is compelling until the final twist. The denouement accomplishes nothing more than showing how lazy Binder is a screenwriter. Binder seems to believe that the surprise revealed at the end of the film absolves him from having to write complicated scenes that would have made the movie a penetrating examination of marriage. As it is now, The Upside of Anger offers a handful of fine actors' moments, the first good performance by Kevin Costner since JFK, and (even with some fine sections) yet more evidence that Binder may never make a truly good movie.