Mark I must say, this is one of the more bizarre and interesting movies I've watched in a long time. The twists were great I thought. Very unexpected outcomes. We all need to suspend our disbelief when watching anything, maybe that was a problem for the people that gave this such a low rating on IMDb, but for me, the writing and acting made me stick with it, and I'm glad I did!So far, any movie I've watched with Tobey Maguire has worked for me, I think it's because he picks vehicles that are interesting. He is one of my favorite actors and never disappoints.Solid 8 stars!

jcbinok "Details" reminds me of the type of movie that was popular in the mid-2000's: every character is just a bit off. Tobey Maguire plays a obstetrician, Jeff, who's addicted to porn; his wife is cheating on him; his neighbor sniffs basil; his female friend gets him high in her husband's vintage car then they proceed to have sex...you get the idea. It's one weird tangent after another. Jeff engenders little sympathy in viewers up through the scene where he tries to buy off the cuckolded husband, Frank (Ray Liotta), who puts in a powerful performance during their confrontation.Maguire's character makes an attempt to change his ways at this point by donating a kidney to his sick buddy, Link (Haysbert). That leads to a second powerful scene(in the church), but not until after the healed buddy kills Jeff's "unreasonable" pregnant neighbor. Sounds complicated, I know.The church scene gets cut off way too quickly, though, IMO (like a sudden fade-out during a killer guitar solo). The movie hurries back to safer ground with the final scenes playing out in domestic "bliss." Jeff and his wife lay their secrets on the table and decide to stay together and not go to the authorities "for the good of the children."It's all so absurd. Wasn't there a police investigation? Surely, Jeff's name would come up in that he was the dead woman's next door neighbor and her obstetrician. Oh well. The movie tries to walk the tightrope between farce and drama. Apart from a couple of scenes with Liotta and Haysbert, it felt much closer to farce.

Paradox-734-788674 I felt compelled to write this review because no one else mentioned what i saw. First of all i thought Tobey's character presented as a kind of vacant person with little sense of self. He cheated in medical school, gets addicted to internet porn, and just sort of falls into having sex with his mentally neighbor (the fabulous LauraLinney). he is a man with no real sense of agency, and without intending to be, is morally bankrupt. He meets Lincoln and sees a chance to redeem himself which he does except it is just one more thing that doesn't really represent true change, like its more of an easy way out of his dilemma. Lincoln ultimately commits an immoral act of his own to express his gratitude to Tobey.When Tobey admits all to his wife, she is then relieved of the guilt of her affair, and they are caught in another moral dilemma, whether to turn Lincoln in or not. In the end they decide life as usual and finally have a beautiful new garden and a second child. Like another reviewer it reminded me of a Cohen brothers movie.

John Raymond Peterson When you read the official movie synopsis you will be thrown off course; it's not much of a comedy per say, so it's been labeled a dark comedy but it's more than that. As most labeled dark comedies don't fare all that well with the general public and indeed with some critics, the ratings tend to throw you off as well, but let's dig a little deeper and try to see what writer/director Jacob Aaron Estes has concocted here. The main protagonist in the movie, Jeff Lang, played by Tobey Maguire, is a OBGYN ten years into a marriage that is… well, on the fritz and his life turns to hell temporarily before the movie ends very surprisingly on a high note.The movie opens with Jeff and Nealy Lang, played oh so well by the beautiful Elizabeth Banks, celebrating their ten year wedding anniversary with a toast from Peter and Rebecca Mazzoni, played respectively by Ray Liotta and Kerry Washington. But all is not well in the marriage as that evening Jeff can't even get lucky; we'll only discover later that this anomaly is simply due to the fact that his lovely wife has been having an affair (but we don't get to know with whom) for the past six months. Furthermore, Nealy is upset with Jeff as he chose the cheaper sodding over seeding of their backyard. Now the big deal with the racoons and that sodded lawn is really where the idea of "DETAILS", on which Estes based his title and perhaps found the key to juxtapose the story's main storyline, finds the mark.There's a commonly known problem with racoons and sodded lawns; they will dig your lawn to no end and turn the sod over for grub. This leads to Jeff trying to poison the critters and in the process he kills the neighbor's cat. The neighbor Lila, played superbly by Laura Linney, is, to put it mildly, a cookoo person. Blaming Jeff for the death of her precious cat she manipulates him into a wild (that bit is really funny) session of impromptu sex. It was not Jeff's first transgression that week as he did have himself a good romp with earlier mentioned Rebecca Mazzoni, his long time friend from college; she was merely commiserating with him and I cannot think of a better person to feel for one's pain than Kerry Washington.Jeff's basketball playing friend Lincoln, played wonderfully by Dennis Haysbert, has been dealt a bad hand by faith; they bonded over the years and Jeff's friend is blessed suddenly by his buddy doctor's beyond kind gestures, one of which has him donating a kidney to him. That gesture ingratiates Jeff to Nealy, but as Jeff confides in Lincoln his newest tribulation with crazy neighbor Lila, who he got pregnant, the grateful Lincoln misinterprets Jeff's rambling, and kills Lila to repay Jeff for what he did for him. The moment Jeff decides to share with his wife his transgressions and the awful turn of events is where the audience gets that this is not a comedy. The choices about what to do under the circumstances are not great, but going over the details of those choices, they find a way through it.Estes lacked good material in the sub-plot dealing with Ray Liotta's revenge against Jeff for cheating with his wife, but other than that, I found the movie a nice piece of work. The cast had led me to believe I could expect nothing less than good performances and I was not disappointed. Tobey Maguire's character reminded me in some way of his role as Homer in The Cider House Rules, perhaps due to the OBGYN bit, while Laura Linney's play had somewhat of the same effect for me as that with a passage of her role as Eleanor in Man of the Year. In short, I liked it and I trust those who like this movie genre will get to see it before it is forgotten.