Simon Arthur expanded his 2007 short about two lovers who travel place to place, almost randomly, wrecking peoples lives and inflicting emotional cruelty upon them. While this idea is a good one --- it's been favorably (and accurately) compared to Neil LaBute's "In the Company of Men" --- it doesn't satisfy us the way that film did. It still feels at the end of the runtime as a bit of a nihilistic let-down.The film almost works better as a quartet of short films all stapled together. Every single one of these vignettes is tight as a drum and very absorbing: they suck you in with the vacuum of a veteran con artist playing short-change tricks on you at a bar.That the core of the film is held together with icy nimbleness by TV vets Lee Tergesen (Red Widow, The Big C, Army Wives) and Enid Graham (Gray's Anatomy, Boardwalk Empire) is both shocking and exciting. One doesn't expect the broad range and elasticity their performances bubble over with. Tergesen is blessed with a neutral, almost banal affect that reminds you of Bill Pullman's knack for portraying casually moral-less characters and Graham wears an almost eerily poker-faced mask throughout, lustily daring you to read her thoughts, and then laughing disdainfully at you when you make the mistake of attempting it.If you like suspenseful drama pieces and plays, don't miss this one. It has all of the elements of vintage LaBute or David Mamet. It will make you think and stay with you, even if it doesn't quite gel into the cohesiveness that might otherwise render it a classic.

Plot: Two traveling lovers make occasional stops here and there to do what they enjoy the most: play games with people. They manipulate people into the strangest of things, from ruining a honey moon to trying to trick money off of an old man.Our thoughts: One of the strongest emotions I can get out of a movie is awkwardness, or if you will - feeling uncomfortable overall. It beats being scared or grossed out any day of the week, when you're put into an everyday situation gone awry. There's an intimacy in feeling awkward and uncomfortable from a movie, you kinda squirm in your seat and have an urge to turn it off just so you can take a breather. "Silver Tongues" did not have THAT strong of an effect, but this is the sort of atmosphere you get from the movie. The awkward, realistic drama that could go anywhere in seconds and you can't do anything about it.It starts with a couple on their honeymoon, getting ready to go to dinner. When they arrive there's a long wait for a free table, but a nice couple invite them to sit at theirs. They agree, and a quiet night of talking and laughing begins. Soon they start sharing intimate details about each other, and before too soon there's a strange vibe and lust in the air. The second couple admitted to being swingers and this put thoughts in motion in the minds of the honeymooners, who first tried to change subject. But the swingers manipulates them into a fight with each other to get what they want. To keep this spoiler free, the night doesn't end here. Later on the swinging couple leaves to find new people to manipulate, from claiming that a priest stole money, to telling old people they are their children.The movie really makes use of the idea of two lovers going around manipulating and tricking people. In fact, that's what the entire movie is. After a while you start wondering when the story will develop further, and especially if you're gonna get to know the real lovers more. It takes a while, but it gets there. With every person they manipulate you get a sense of who these two are, the woman especially. Between their games, they have their own games of rough sexual acts. You puzzle together what you get from their personalities, but it's hard to truly know who they are since most of the movie is an act. Sometimes you feel a vulnerability, a crack in their act, but you can never really know if it's part of the act or not. In the first half of the movie this bothered me, but then I really fell into it and couldn't stop watching it. I kept trying to find these little signs of their true selves."Silver Tongues" thrives on awkwardness and the viewer feeling bad for the acts that they do. Especially when they get to the old people home and trick the elderly that they are their children. You can't help but feel like you are part of the blame. And why is that? It's because the actors, Lee Tergesen and Enid Graham, are really selling their characters. They seem humane, but their acts are so cruel that you have no idea what they are capable of. Clearly a solid script and careful directing by Simon Arthur, I still have to commend the two leads for their terrific performances.Not a perfect experience, I can still say that "Silver Tongues" is a great movie. It's repetitive in that it's mostly about a couple playing tricks on people, and after a while you start to wonder what the core of the movie actually is. After a while it lets you into the characters a bit more, and straight away it's a much more interesting movie. It's a movie that can often make you feel empty and, as I said before, awkward, but it's not afraid to make entertainment out of their tricks at times too. The entire church scene is quite entertaining more than uncomfortable, and I think the balance is important. It's just a good watch that I definitely recommend to drama/thriller fans.More reviews at FilmBizarro.com

It's kind of hard to talk about this film without spoilers, but it's great to watch something where I had NO idea what it was going to do next. I can almost always say with a film, "Okay, one of two things is going to happen here at the ending", and it always does. I had no idea how things were going to pan out here, and what did was mind-blowing!Its obviously low budget, and there's a couple of scenes which don't work as well as others, but overall it's great, and Lee Tergesen gives my favorite performance of the year so far. I love Oz and Generation Kill, but it bums me out that he doesn't do more films. Hopefully this'll help.

Silver Tongues is a deeply engaging psychological thriller about characters operating outside the rules of civilized discourse. Why do they do it? Why not? I came upon this film without warning at the Annapolis Prentious Film Society screening, and felt that it was better than nearly every other film I saw in 2011. If we're going to nominate 9 films for best picture, Silver Tongues should have been one of them.Lee Tergesen is a superb actor, and this script allows him to explore all of the crazy stuff that must be lurking in his subconscious. Enid Graham is sexy and just as in touch with the outrageous. The script is well structured, with a lot of engaging subtext. Independent cinema at its best.