It is a movie.

S_Soma

I would never be able to say that "The Gateway" is a "good movie", at least not with a straight face and a clean conscience. But neither is it truly terrible.

"The Gateway" seems to operate at about the level of an underfunded student movie and then rises a few percentage points above that by sheer dint of the enthusiasm of the actors and director, but only a few percentage points; it does not soar. It does have its moments and some of the acting is satisfactory, but for the most part it suffers the predictable maladies of movies coming from such origins.

It occasionally happens that a movie coming from such mean circumstances actually serves to highlight the exceptional innate talent of some actor or director shining like a beacon in contrast to the surrounding collection of amateurs and you can predict an eventual bright future, like Steve McQueen in the classic "The Blob". But that is not the case here. All we see is a competent effort by mostly-committed but just average actors and an inexperienced director that has only three directorial efforts under his belt since 2004. Major plot elements "just happen" without explanation or rationale which are rather telling blunders in even a novice director.

The logic behind the rating of 6 stars is that it is just slightly higher than what you would expect for the average of movies from such origins, but there wasn't enough of an inspired effort to raise "The Gateway" higher than that.

Not every movie can be a blockbuster or a work of art, however. Sometimes there is entertainment value in seeing the local yokels put on a show in the barn and allowing their enthusiasm and inventiveness to be contagious and carry you away into the story. And so it is here; you will not be wowed but you can expect at least sufficient entertainment to compensate you for the 74 minutes from your life. Just don't expect to remember the movie or its name a week later.

score 6/10

S_Soma 31 October 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3572224/