UK Edition
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Screenwriter: William Whitehurst
Starring: Rutger Hauer, Matthew Davis, Dagmara Dominczyk
Running time: 90 mins
Rutger Hauer stars as university professor Sanford Pollard, a famed academic having a long-term affair with one of his graduate students, Julia (Dagmara Dominczyk). When bright young student and disciple Carter (Matthew Davis) enters their lives, a love triangle is created which holds no happiness for anyone.
Presumably in an effort to add intrigue to a largely bland storyline, Mentor is depicted mostly by flashbacks, though unfortunately this backfires. The story opens with Carter heading off to Pollard's funeral and at this point we know very little of the characters, only that they have a frayed relationship. Over the next one and a half hours, director David Langlitz bounces us around from one timeframe to another in which we learn snippets of information about the over-arching story and the three lead characters.
However, the nuggets of information we acquire is never really enough to make us care either way about any of the characters.The fact that the audience has minimal emotional investment in the characters even after this time renders the ending a great anti-climax.
This lack of interest in the characters can also be blamed on some questionable casting and characterisation. Matthew Davis simply doesn't deliver the emotional range which the script aims for, whilst Dominiczyk in particular is never given a deep enough character to play with. Hauer, meanwhile, is invariably a joy to watch when he's been given a role suited to him but this just isn't one of them.
Mentor is an overall disappointment, at first setting up the groundwork to deliver an intriguing drama but unfortunately losing its potential in a muddled and aloof delivery.
