High on the list of fictional characters I like much better than anyone in real life: Idris Elba as Stringer Bell in HBO's The Wire.
String would, if he ever met me, no doubt grind me into a fine pink powder and cut me into a few hundred kilos of Baltimore horse, but I would be OK with that, because it would mean he just made an awful lot of money, and Stringer Bell deserves to be happy.
See? That's love right there, which is why I take offense to the suggestion I have a "man crush" on Elba. Wrong. Our relationship is a flat-out man mad love affair. Yes, it's unrequited, but that's only because he has no clue I exist and would probably be weirded out if he did. Still, even though our affair is entirely one-sided and delusional, I can't help but feel hurt when he appears in subworthy thrillers like Obsessed.
Idris Elba has pretty much a perfect life: a beautiful wife, a new kid and a newer home, and a high-powered job as an asset manager. He's also got Ali Larter, a brand-new temp at his office.
Larter falls for Elba the first time they meet. Naturally, he rebuffs her — he's married to Beyonce Knowles, after all — but Larter won't take no for an answer. The harder he pushes her away, the more determined her efforts to bag him become.
For far, far too long, said efforts are too low-stakes to be either threatening or interesting. Watching Obsessed muddle through its momentum-free plot is like listening to your grandpa spend an hour telling a story about how candy bars used to cost a nickel: you get the point right away, then have to silently suffer an interminable lecture where the teller doesn't even remember why he started talking but is damn sure going to make you pray for his death before he's done. Honestly, I feel that way during every conversation, be it the grocery clerk wishing me a nice day or Keira Knightley asking why I never return her calls, but I go to the movies to get away from that sort of thing, not to relive them with a theater full of strangers.
But at least it's got Elba, right? Surely the dude who played the coldly murderous Adam Smith of the inner-city heroin trade can improve any movie he's in. Even a movie that for some insane reason wrote its lead character as a bland, do-gooding, hot-chick-naysaying dork whose part doesn't extend beyond continually announcing, "No, I will not make out with you."
Oh. Bummer.
Well, consider that unsquanderable resource squandered. Not that writer David Loughery's subtlety-free dialogue gives anyone else anything to get excited about, either.
So we've got boring lines spoken by boring characters, a story that spins its wheels so hard it's grinding rims, and a sense of thrills that believes giant winky-face emoticons are the height of creeping horror. After a period of time that probably only felt like longer than I've been alive, Obsessed finally gets down to what we all came to see: a batshit crazy catfight that climaxes with the combatants playing Hot Lava in a filthy attic.
Excellent times. Too bad it comes after a jillion hours of "Hey, leave me alone, weirdy" and "Uh, I want you so bad," a string of repetitive scenes that build to nothing but audience resentment. Cutting 20 minutes would have helped, but Obsessed would need a lot more aid than that before it's worth your time.
Grade: C-