Thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I think it’s the best political thriller I’ve seen in a long time. It may seem a little slow to many but acting and plot is the thing that keeps this movie together, not special effects or action.
Great acting by Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn…Don’t see it if you expect any romance between the central characters in movies. Apparently it’s a British movie so the camera work isn’t Hollywood style.
[quote=“Matchstick_man”]Thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I think it’s the best political thriller I’ve seen in a long time. It may seem a little slow to many but acting and plot is the thing that keeps this movie together, not special effects or action.
Great acting by Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn…Don’t see it if you expect any romance between the central characters in movies. Apparently it’s a British movie so the camera work isn’t Hollywood style.[/quote]Enjoyed it, though I felt the last 15 minutes were a bit too slow and too Hollywood-y.
Maybe it was nothing special to you but since I’ve been in Taiwan I’ve made a number of friends from the African continent and from what I’ve been informed by them, the first scene is something they deal with on a day to day basis.
I found the whole movie had me wondering afterwards what my life would be like if I had been born in a country with a noticably corrupt government. I consider any movie that causes me to think to be special, mainly because not many do.
I found it started to get hollywood-ish towards the end when the stances with guns were done by the FBI agents, too.
Don’t read online reviews unless they are factually correct. Sydney Pollack is an American. It was a Hollywood film from day one, shot in NYC and Hollywood studio.
Which online review did you read? I’d like to see what they said…
A second-rate morality play, with red herrings and MacGuffins shoring up a tower of Babel. Do yourself a favor and rent Death and the Maiden instead."
– Peter Canavese, GROUCHO REVIEWS
“Raises the spectre of mass murder just so Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn can have a half-dozen really boring conversations.”
– Walter Chaw, FILM FREAK CENTRAL
“Pollack becomes so caught up in the machinations of plot that he allows the politics to boil down into simplistic mush.”
– Sean Axmaker, ST@TIC MULTIMEDIA
“It is intelligent, intriguing, and topical, but it too often gets mired in its own good intentions, too many plot convolutions, and character ambiguities that try to pass for suspense.”
– Marjorie Baumgarten, AUSTIN CHRONICLE
maybe cause I recently saw I am Sam, but I kept expecting Sean Penn to scream “Gimme back my daughter”, especially when he drew his gun out, my gf was thinkin da same thing so I know I aint weird.