When creating a family drama film, it's one thing to have all the correct pieces to make the emotion work. "Wildlife" does that. It's another thing, however, to make all those pieces really mean something the move the emotions of the audience. "Wildlife" fails in this key task, rendering it an ultimately poor experience.

For a basic plot summary, this film tells the story centers on a family in 1960s Montana. Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal) struggles to find work around town and volunteers to fight fires instead. While he is away, wife Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) has something of a mid-life crisis of her own, conducting an affair with town car salesman Warren (Bill Camp). Caught in the middle of this is son Joe (Ed Oxenbould),who at 14 is just trying to figure out whether or not he likes football and navigating a female friendship.

One major positive I can say about "Wildlife" is that it contains some solid acting performances, paramount being that of young Oxenbould. Though his character isn't given much room to emote (a sad fault of the script),he seems to be "in the middle" of nearly every key scene. Gyllenhaal is never a letdown, as per the usual, and Mulligan (like Oxenbould) does the best with the material given her.

The main problem here, however, is that the viewer never really gets a sense of what the film is supposed to be about. At the outset, it looks to center on Jerry but then he leaves for quite some time. The focus then shifts to Jeanette, whose personality change as soon as her husband leaves is almost too jarring to be believable (or at very least needed some more reasoning behind it). Finally, there are times when the film really seems like it might just be all about Joe, yet none of his life outside his relationship to his parents is given any shrift or importance at all besides nominally establishing his age and adolescence.

So, while watching "Wildlife", I never really felt like I knew what was trying to be conveyed. This made the emotion it tries to inflict more of a glance blow than an arrow to the heart. The sparseness of the rest of the production (stable camera shots, very little music presence) does not help the cause. I was never outrightly bored while watching, but never even close to "fully invested" either.

Wildlife has no substance and void of answers.

We all know Gyllenhaal and Mulligan can act, but where's the story worth telling and the heart. We are fed this dull tale through the perspective of the kid, in a similar vein to a performance director Dano himself might give and the kid Oxenbould, weak. Jerry let Warren Miller off rather easy and why'd Joe run; cos his dad just came back and will be gone again, but why run? Say something... not "I went to the police station."

It's 1960 small town Montana. Jeannette (Carey Mulligan) and Jerry Brinson (Jake Gyllenhaal) seem to be a loving couple with their teenage son Joe. Jerry loses his groundskeeper job at a golf course. Instead of accepting an offer to return to his old job, he surprises his family and takes off to fight wildfires burning nearby. The couple fights. Jeannette goes out with the older successful Warren Miller who owns a car dealership.

Paul Dano is trying his hand in directing and adapting this novel with his partner Zoe Kazan. It's a slow and quiet start. Dano does leave a sense of foreboding with his style and an unnerving Gyllenhaal. With his departure, Mulligan takes over with a devastating performance. I do wish for the boy to do more with the girl. He's the audience substitute as he sits quietly while the firestorm rages all around. This is a movie of quiet explosions. These are two great actors doing some powerful acting.