Reviews

An epic letdown from Wolfgang Peterson. The original film was always good entertainment, but comparing the two versions makes the original look like Citizen Kane! It's like Wolfgang took everything that was good about the original and threw it away. Ronald Neame? Never realized what a great director he was (DeMille Jr!) until I saw this remake. Just compare the way he staged the big scenes, framed the action with a sense of scope, gave his actors real characters to play and used sets, lighting, music and pacing to really pull you into the "adventure." The original is always knocked for its "cardboard" characters and lame dialogue. But at least it had a "theme." It was about something. It was "if you want to survive then start climbing. don't sit around and wait for help to arrive. Religion won't save you, the government won't save you (don't forget this was Watergate era.) Only you and your own hard work will save you." It seemed like everything was shot too close. there was no scope or sense of epic-ness. was this to save money so they didn't have to build big sets? It felt like this film was edited with a hack saw that took away all suspense. All of a sudden a wave comes and it turns over. This modern ship didn't have any kind of warning system that would warn of a "wall of water 90 feet high"?? Did I blink and miss the scene where the wave shows up on the radar? Thank goodness there was an officer on the bridge who could "sense" the oncoming tidal wave. Gimme a break.

where was the Christmas tree? In the original you could feel that it was Christmas/New Years. Decorations, baby! In this remake they simply decide to follow Josh Lucas up some wreckage. No drama at all! what about all of Richard Dreyfuss' gay buddies? He did't even try to find them! The fx were very cheesy digital. I saw it in IMAX so maybe that's why. Was it my imagination, or did the first trailer have more of the ship turning over?Terrible action music! Didn't they learn anything from John Williams' moody original? But the thing that killed this for me was how mean spirited and gory it was. My 12 year old daughter kept turning away. I saw the original when I was 10 and one burned chef in the kitchen was really heartbreaking. But now people are bar b cued in flash fires or electrocuted in nightclubs with no feeling. when Lucas tells Dreyfus to deliberately drop the waiter in order to save himself, then Drefus kicks the poor guy to his death -- you could really feel the audience detach. Too cruel to be called "entertainment." Save your money. Or better yet, rent Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and watch it on fast forward and you'll get a sense of this loser.

Night Watch was one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. Came off as a Russian film student's regurgitation of Star Wars, the Matrix, LOTR, David Lynch visuals, you name it. But what killed it was the relentless MTV video effects. Non stop to the point of insanity. And was that the longest plane crash in film history? And didn't the power plant blow up? Gag. And what happened to that Russian pop star who was yanked off stage to fight evil, or be evil, or... who cares. The fx were bad, the make up fx were bad (dig the fake nipples) and I'm just padding this review to get the minimum ten lines of text. there is really nothing to say but stay away. stay very, very far away.

Saveyour money.

Wow. I have to agree with the others here who commented about how overrated this film is. I'm a huge Clint fan, both as an actor and especially as a director. In his own way he's an American auteur. Unfortunately Mystic River is one of his weakest movies ever.

**Spoilers**

Not only is it painfully slow, but it's painfully cliched. Events are telegraphed miles in advance. Some of the dialogue is awful. Tim Robbins (the best thing in this movie) going on about "I had to split my personality into somebody else so I could deal with the abuse" is a great example of bad dialogue. The wonderful Marcia Gay Harden plays her role like a bug-eyed looney from a 1930s Universal horror film. If the usually incredible Sean Penn cried one more time I would have puked. And this is one of those movies that so obviously sets up a killer that you know it can't be that character, and then in the last ten minutes the real killer is discovered. But I have one last complaint. Clint should stick to directing and give up composing. The music is treacle. The crescendo blast of music at the end when a gun is shot and the screen cuts to a bright sunny day was too much. He should stick with Lennie Niehaus.

This is similar in many ways to Blood Work and True Crime, where some of the acting is way over the top cliched, and some of the plot twists come either too late or out of left field. Clint is a wonderful director, but like Woody Allen he's been in a slump lately. Let's hope they both recover soon.

Man, this was one overrated movie. Found it hard to watch, and I have to include SPOILERS to say way. From the camera moves to the music to the acting, this thing was so O!V!E!R!D!O!N!E! I couldn't stand it. Jeff Bridges is one of my favorite actors, but here he's such an over the top loon that I had no sympathy for him. And I never bought that his discovery of the plot started when he saw a small part of a blueprint that's hidden under stuff on a kitchen table! He saw this for what, 4 seconds? And didn't it bug anybody that the bad guys showed up at such convenient times, as if they had ESP? Jeff reads microfilm about Tim in a library, and voila, Tim is at the library looking over Jeff's shoulder! Jeff reads Tim's old yearbook then falls asleep, and voila, he wakes up and Tim is there! Jeff's girlfriend is at some anonymous mall out in the middle of nowhere, spilling her guts to his answering machine about bad guy Tim, and voila, she turns around and Tim's wife is there! It's these logic problems and the over the top style that make this film unwatchable.

***SPOILER***

A thought for those who didn't "get" why this movie is so great: watch it again. I really liked it the first time I saw it, but LOVED it the second time. What a great, deep movie. Even Keifer's performance was much improved on second viewing. And I don't understand why people think the ending is a let down. Those final shots of him recapturing the love of his life have to be among the most romantic images ever put in a "sci-fi" movie. He creates Shell Beach, brings light to the world, and meets the woman he fell in love with who now suffers from the amnesia that he suffered with at the beginning. She stood up for him while his memories were gone, now he'll do the same for her. This is what true love is all about, and we know they'll get together. Plus the movie has a great SCORE. I only wish I saw this in a theater.

What a great movie! How about Mulholland Drive and Memento for a double feature? Like Memento, this one really stayed with me. I wish Lynch would do a mainstream Hollywood horror movie, like a remake of the Exorcist. He would scare the living sh*t out of everybody!

The acting is incredible! Who is Naomi Watts, and will she be nominated for Best Actress this year? She deserves to win. This is one of the most incredible performances I've seen in years.

Thank you David for keeping film alive.

** SPOILERS **

I'm surprised so many people don't 'get' this movie! I hate to give it away, but the happy go lucky Nancy Drew first half is a dream, and the scary, sad second half is the reality. It's the tell tale heart, as told from the POV of somebody who went to Hollywood all starry eyed, and wound up like so many others: used, crushed and spit out by the seedy, selfish nightmare that is LA.

I have to agree with all the negative comments. What a huge disappointment. It felt like Lucas shot the very first draft of his script. Ewan, Liam and Samuel are GREAT actors, but they all stink in this. The editing stinks. The FX are very good, but never great. Sorry, but the pod race looks like a model pod hanging in front of blurry brown & tan CGI backgrounds, and the final battle never feels real: the sky is too blue, the grass is too green, and the bots are too clean. The film's biggest crime, though, is leaving Obi Wan on that spaceship with nothing to do, especially when you've got Ewan playing him. One big question: in the original 3 films, why didn't R2 know that Darth, aka Annakin, was his creator? Is it even hinted at? And why does the final saber fight take place in what looks like a huge death star? And is it true that an angry, disillusioned Jar Jar will turn to the dark side and call himself Boba Fett? That was a joke, not a spoiler.

This confirms it. Hollywood is run by idiots. I can't believe they wasted so much money on such an awful story. Granted, this film did have it's emotional moments and I did get choked up a few times, but it was when the film focused on the real events and the real people caught up in it. It was never during the lame, blandly acted love triangle. Who approved this love triangle story? And three hours of it? Example & semi-SPOILER: the movie hit rock bottom right after the bombing, after we've witnessed an unbelievable - and true - horror story. Ben and Josh show up in the hospital - full of dying men - and Ben gets all cranky because his feelings were hurt. Are we really supposed to care about what happens to this flat love triangle after we've witnessed such real life carnage? And since everything is shot so picture perfect (aka antiseptic), these characters never become real. They look like models in a detergent commercial. Another low was the second half of the attack sequence, when the movie goes Star Wars and Ben and Josh become superhero flyboys ("Yee-haw! I got me one!") I won't even get into the shots that were ripped right out of Titanic. They even threw in the Queen Mary, and ruined the scene with some corn ball hijinx. I could go on, but life is too short.

Warning: spoilers ahead. Despite great performances all around (save for Telly Savalas' giggling psycho), this is one overrated and overlong 'classic' action movie. I have a hard time when Hollywood tries to turn murderers and rapists -- all sentenced to death or life in prison -- into a bunch of lovable, misunderstood goofballs. I could buy it if one or two of them had been wrongfully accused, but eleven of them? Or rather six of them, since the other half of the 'dozen' aren't even developed into characters. I could also buy it if they redeem themselves or come to some personal revelation through their mission, but the finale of this film was so sadistic that it ruined everything that had been set up. Are we supposed to cheer when these so far unredeemed 'heroes' pour gasoline on a bunch of trapped Nazi officers' WIVES?? Why did the writers put women in this scene at all? Where's the redemption in psychos acting psychotic? This finale just puts them on the same level as the Nazis, but unfortunately this film isn't going for any kind of moral message. The screaming, trapped women getting doused in gasoline by a bunch of unredeemed murderers and rapists completely ruined what had been an OK action film.

This is a great, underrated 'movie' movie! Although the cinematography and Sarah Miles' performance usually (deservedly) get all the attention, both Robert Mitchum and Trevor Howard turn in excellent, subtle performances. Three scenes to note: Miles and Jones first encounter in the bar, when the lights fade up from black; Miles and Jones at dawn on the hillside - note the sound editing when Lean cuts back to Mitchum watching them, and their reflection in the window next to him (the sound effect is the generator from the British camp); and (semi-spoiler!) the final shots of Jones on the beach, with the setting sun reflected on the mirror in the lid of the ammunitions box. If the film is criticized for having a 'thin' plot, it's because much of this story is told visually. Too bad we can't see this in 70mm as it was intended to be seen! How about a revival???