Imagine a two-hour long church sermon, the point of which is to convince you that getting into trafficking narcotics is going to make you thoroughly miserable. In a nutshell, that is what this movie is like.
It is visually stylish in places. It's watchable. If you have nothing better to do of an evening, and you find yourself in close proximity to a DVD of this movie, by all means go ahead and give it a shot. Judging from the other reviews apparently some people like it.
I, however, did not like this movie much at all.. Firstly the film makes the colossal mistake of trying to appear realistic, whilst blatantly not being. Other reviewers have attacked the plot as being the main issue in terms of lack of realism-- or the stereotyped portrayal of the various ethnic groups that are shown in the film. These issues aren't really what make this film so wholly unbelievable though. "University student gets involved with a bunch of drug-running gangsters..." Sure, it is perhaps a bit improbable, but stranger things have happened... And yes, the stereotyping is irritating, but there's nothing particularly implausible about it. No. The thing that makes this so flaming unrealistic is that there is barely a glimmer of humor. The characters are uniformly miserable. There's almost zero jesting. There's no monkeying around. It's just gloom, gloom, gloom all the way through. Okay guys-- we get it-- if you get involved with gangsters your life will become utterly miserable... The only thing I'm unsure about is whether the writer and director are actually living in such a well-insulated middle-class bubble that, in spite of having presumably done some research on the topic, they still think that this is what life is like for those involved in the criminal underworld.
Now, don't get me wrong-- I'm not insistent on realism in my gangster flicks. I love Tarantino, which has tendencies to be even more unrealistic (though in a totally different manner)... The problem here is that the film doesn't really have anything to make up for all this miserable sermonizing. I like the visual style... but none of the male characters really grab you. Actually by far my favorite character was the love-interest, Sophie... (And I don't think this was entirely a question of her being far more enjoyable to look at)... there was a sense of realism to her character, and roundedness, which the others lacked. Perhaps it's just that the director gave her the freedom to smile occasionally! However her role is pretty incidental to the plot, and she doesn't get all that much screen time-- so in the end we're mainly just left with a bunch of miserable blokes for the two hour slog...
It is visually stylish in places. It's watchable. If you have nothing better to do of an evening, and you find yourself in close proximity to a DVD of this movie, by all means go ahead and give it a shot. Judging from the other reviews apparently some people like it.
I, however, did not like this movie much at all.. Firstly the film makes the colossal mistake of trying to appear realistic, whilst blatantly not being. Other reviewers have attacked the plot as being the main issue in terms of lack of realism-- or the stereotyped portrayal of the various ethnic groups that are shown in the film. These issues aren't really what make this film so wholly unbelievable though. "University student gets involved with a bunch of drug-running gangsters..." Sure, it is perhaps a bit improbable, but stranger things have happened... And yes, the stereotyping is irritating, but there's nothing particularly implausible about it. No. The thing that makes this so flaming unrealistic is that there is barely a glimmer of humor. The characters are uniformly miserable. There's almost zero jesting. There's no monkeying around. It's just gloom, gloom, gloom all the way through. Okay guys-- we get it-- if you get involved with gangsters your life will become utterly miserable... The only thing I'm unsure about is whether the writer and director are actually living in such a well-insulated middle-class bubble that, in spite of having presumably done some research on the topic, they still think that this is what life is like for those involved in the criminal underworld.
Now, don't get me wrong-- I'm not insistent on realism in my gangster flicks. I love Tarantino, which has tendencies to be even more unrealistic (though in a totally different manner)... The problem here is that the film doesn't really have anything to make up for all this miserable sermonizing. I like the visual style... but none of the male characters really grab you. Actually by far my favorite character was the love-interest, Sophie... (And I don't think this was entirely a question of her being far more enjoyable to look at)... there was a sense of realism to her character, and roundedness, which the others lacked. Perhaps it's just that the director gave her the freedom to smile occasionally! However her role is pretty incidental to the plot, and she doesn't get all that much screen time-- so in the end we're mainly just left with a bunch of miserable blokes for the two hour slog...