Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Franklyn is one of those movies where you have to watch more than half of it before you really even know what is going on. It's rather confusing up until the last half hour, and then it comes together. If you're willing to sit through the confusion, the reward is actually pretty good. This review will contain no spoilers.

The story takes place in two worlds. You might call them alternate universes where it's the same place, but at a different time. One story takes place in present day London and the other in a futuristic place called Meanwhile City. It opens in Meanwhile City with a masked man preparing to kill someone, but he does not say who the target is. From there, the movie jumps back and forth between these two worlds.

I found this movie to be incredibly original in how it takes some common storytelling methods and puts a big twist on them. This movie follows the formula of telling a bunch of individual character stories and then slowly revealing how they all tie together. The common theme in all of their stories is that they are looking for something or someone, and there's a lot of emotional pain and baggage involved.  One man is searching for his son while another is getting over a relationship that fell apart right before the wedding. There's also a woman who makes several suicide attempts in the name of some kind of ‘art project' while she tries to reconcile past wrongs with her mother.

Many people are going to watch about the first 15-20 minutes of this and then turn it off. The reason is that it's just so weird in how the story is told, plus it takes so long for it to come together. There's a little bit of action involving some fight scenes that help keep your interest up in the beginning, at least until you realize what is really going on. The fact that the main character spends most of the movie in a mask that looks like a cross between The Invisible Man and Rorschach from The Watchmen is going to irk some viewers, too.

Ryan Philippe is the most recognizable actor in this movie, and he's the one that stays in the mask most of the time. He does narrate most of the story, and occasionally he uses a British accent. I think he did a decent enough job considering it could have been a body double doing most of the work. Eva Green, who you might recognize from her role as Vesper Lynd in the two recent Bond movies with Daniel Craig, plays the part of the artist with some serious problems.

Despite the oddness of the story and the way that it is told, this movie really looks good. A lot of effort was put into creating the atmosphere of Meanwhile City, and it reminded me a lot of the movie Dark City. The cinematography was quite good in the way lighting and sets were used, and this does not look like some kind of low budget movie at all. This is writer/director Gerald McMorrow's first major film, while his only other credit on IMDb.com is a short movie. I think this young English director is someone to keep an eye on.

Although it has a somewhat limited commercial appeal, I think Franklyn is worth checking out. It has the right blend of mystery and suspense with just a touch of science fiction to keep things interesting, and the ending is worth the crazy ride it takes to get there.

Recommended: Yes

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older