It’s never a good feeling when an ending just doesn’t match up with the particular film you are watching. There’s surely nothing worse than a huge letdown after sitting in a theater for almost two hours, and a big letdown is what we get come the ending of Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal’s “The Words.”

Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) is an award-winning writer with a soul-killing secret. He may come off as a young struggling novelist trying to make his voice heard, but he’s in fact a phony. Jansen eventually comes upon a manuscript that turns out to be a magnificent story, and after re-writing and calling it his, he is rightfully exploited by an old man who knows the novel like the back of his hand – because it is his novel.

“The Words” weaves between the tale of Jansen’s inevitable shame and another writer named Clay Hammond’s (Dennis Quaid) public reading of his new book titled “The Words” – which is the exact story of Jansen stealing the old man’s work. Redemption from embarrassment and indignity is the theme of this movie, and it is obvious that Hammond and Jansen are the same character in different points in their lives. 

As strong of a message it holds behind it, a good chunk of the movie is just the camera staring at Bradley Cooper’s face while he’s reading or thinking – and he’s just not that interesting of a guy. There lies a lot of obvious metaphorical material here in regards to great filmmakers who have been ripped off or have had their works rewritten, but “The Words” doesn’t ever seem to find the exact wording for what it’s trying to say. 

The cinematography of New York City is nothing worth writing home about; the film is clearly not meant to be an exposition of the Big Apple, as most of the shots are just plain and standard. The acting is strong, as Zoe Saldana, Olivia Wilde and the rest of the aforementioned cast are all believable and effective in their roles. 

From kissing to crying, “The Words” truly tinkers with every one of your emotions at one time or another but in the end the climax was just fluffy, and the ending was meant to be ambiguous when there really is nothing at all to think about. The film audibly states several times that “We all make choices; the hard thing is to live with them.” Stealing is a shitty choice, yeah, we know. Regardless, these words should speak to every auteur throughout the world whose unrecognized work was claimed as someone else’s.

Grade: C+