The murder is solved in a bit of remarkably perfunctory plotting, while Aaron and Krista play out the long-suppressed sense of entanglement that is Oates's true plot.
There's a huge difference between the perfunctory plots sometimes used in pornography and the experience of immersing yourself in a story, characters and a considered environment – all those elements of the intellectual exchange involved in reading.
The plot is perfunctory, intentionally gimmicky, the better to serve the pointed allegory.
As you'd expect from a video game spinoff, the plot is perfunctory tosh; a rivalry between two butch ciphers (one of whom favours black attire) involving an old girlfriend, a dead brother, and a series of high velocity road races with air support and police pursuit aplenty.
The plot is perfunctory, the violence gruesomely gross -- but there's nothing with even a scintilla of the wit of a line like "Machete don't text".
The plot is a perfunctory scramble of family-film conventions.
The film's handling of Jaggers (Robbie Coltrane), Pip's dispassionate lawyer and a puller of many plot strings, is perfunctory, despite Mr. Coltrane's expansive performance.
This, however, seems a poor excuse for paying such perfunctory attention to the main plot Liam's romance with Eunice because the complete implausibility of that story line makes for a flimsy and unsatisfying novel, a novel quite unworthy of this gifted author's talents.
Nuanced thoughts are out of the question, and plotting is busily perfunctory.
