Trust

Directed by David Schwimmer

(R)

**

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David Schwimmer’s new drama about a sexual predator plays like “a feature-length elaboration of a ‘Do you know where your children are?’ PSA,” said Eric Hynes in Time Out New York. Adapting a play that he co-wrote, the director and former Friends star films the story of a 14-year-old girl’s seduction and rape with the subtlety of “a Dateline exposé,” and wastes three good actors in the process. Actually, they’re not completely wasted, said Jeannette Catsoulis in The New York Times. Clive Owen and Catherine Keener play the victim’s parents, and their “messy exchanges” ring “uncomfortably true” in a movie whose restraint elsewhere “can feel stifling.” Trust “skirts salaciousness” by focusing on “emotional aftershocks” rather than the crime itself, but Schwimmer seems to be wearing “several pairs of kid gloves.” He’s clearly “adept with actors,” though, and draws a “remarkable performance” from teenager Liana Liberato, said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. The film “loses focus” whenever she leaves the screen, but when the camera is on her, she “makes each squirmy, painful development dramatic.”