The Family Doorman (Quando o Galo Cantar Pela Terceira Vez Renegarás Tua Mãe): Movie Review

Short and bittersweet. The Brazilian film "The Family Doorman" had a lot of potential as a psychological thriller but fails to deliver on the thrill portion. While it gave some insightful thoughts on the topic of mental health, the twist comes a little too late to make its mark.

Inácio (Fernando Alves Pinto) is the doorman of his apartment building. When his father suddenly dies, his mental state is pushed to the edge. After becoming obsessed with a tenant and unable to control his internal urges, things turn dangerously explosive and puts everyone close to him in danger.

At 71 minutes long, "The Family Doorman" felt a little too short too truly explore the intricacies of its main protagonist, Inácio. From the get-go, the film was unabashed in letting audiences know that Inácio has some extremely disturbing issues as a person. Inácio is extremely obssessed with one of the tenants named Antônio. He stalks and robs Antônio in a creepy manner. As a trump card, the film also tries to present why Inácio turned out to be what he is as an adult. With Inácio's mother a wicked and cruel figure throughout the film, we do get some sympathy for Inácio at times. Unfortunately, there are really no thrilling sequences here. This is purely psychological and character-driven through and through. If we could pick the film's greatest asset, it would be Fernando Alves Pinto as Inácio. While his performances was not powerful or riveting if we're really being honest, he does enough to be at least believable as a character struggling with mental health. Overall, "The Family Doorman" is short enough for the final product to be acceptable but the short runtime also limited the ways the film could have explored its characters more. The narrative was okay but it lacks any impactful scenes. While there's a twist near the end, the reveal fell flat.

Rating: 2 and a half reels





Why you should watch it:
- makes you think about the topic of mental health
- plays around with the idea of a biased reality

Why you shouldn't watch it:
-


From Breaking Glass Pictures, "The Family Doorman" is now available on VOD (Video-on-Demand) via iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Google Play, Xbox, and Vudu.