The Sinner (spoiler alert)

Sometimes recommendations can go ignored. I watched The Sinner, and the verdict is: not that great. For those unfamiliar, it's basically a story about this woman who commits this obvious murder in public, and then afterwards the story unfolds for you to find out about her psychological trauma that lead her to act like this. It was just interesting enough that I kept watching to find out what would happen. Then the reveals would not be that great. 

The characters were not that interesting. Towards the end, I kept wondering, if Bill Pullman's character is this investigator, how come he doesn't have any other work to do? He just has all this extra time on the clock at work that he can investigate whatever he wants and he doesn't need warrants or need to account for his time or anything? He can just go down random tangents on a whim. There's all this stuff that they just kind of gloss over that doesn't make that much sense, like the trial at the very end where they tie everything up in a mostly neat bow. And the camaraderie between Pullman and Biel? I just didn't feel the chemistry that those two characters are supposed to have that inspires him to keep digging into her case. And her blankness and melancholy I just found uninteresting; she wasn't a particularly likeable character. She just kept saying, "I don't remember" and acting confused and not really interested in finding out what happened and was just going to give up and go to jail until Pullman's character made her do stuff to try to remember. At the end they made it sound like, "Ooh, she faced all these tough things and didn't give up". What are you talking about? She gave up before she even tried to do anything. The only reason anything happened at all was because the other character did more investigating, she didn't do anything. She lucked out. 

Anyway, I don't recommend wasting the 8 hours on it.