Reviews

Not highly rated here by many users, but that is probably because the film takes a while to really take off. When it does, it keeps you pinned back because the ride is at breakneck speed.

Whoever thought of the plot must be a genius. It's another blend of time travel with quantum physics and clairvoyance, except that the main character is only able to see 2 minutes ahead. More, he sees the different permutations possible in those two minutes.

There are, of course, inconsistencies which has one gasping "now why didn't he..." Other than that, the climax virtually explodes in your screen and just when you thought it was all over, a surprise awaits you at the end that even has you feeling a tad foolish for having been so gripped by it.

Not a classic by any means, but at least, in comparison to the first one (Goal!), a more accomplished film.

The game scenes were not as contrived as in the first movie, hardly surprising since some of the clips were straight off real matches.

Becker did not look out of his depth in the company of the likes of Zidane, Roberto Carlos and David Beckham -- as long as he did not have the ball, that is. In a dressing room scene inside the Bernabeu, for instance, Becker's time on the ball in a jolly juggling scene was thankfully limited to one touch.

I guess it's too much to ask for an actor who had real football skills, and I guess that realization kept the cameras more focused on the 'real' football players in game situations. This added more to a sense of realism, as compared to the first movie when Becker was scene doing all sorts of fantastic things -- corny to a trained eye.

This movie's real merit comes from the way it handled the human element: Santi's head getting a tad too big from all the media attention and from being in the company of Real Madrid's galacticos; the lover's tiff with Roz, doubtless echoed in many a professional football player's life; and the surprise of finding he has a half-brother living in Spain along with the painful reunion with a long-lost Mother.

Dramatic without going overboard, and without losing touch with the primary plot that this is a professional footballer's story.

Nothing unique about this movie's theme, a sort of drama version of the Sister Act series. Young teacher meets a class of underachievers, are openly hostile at first; she wins her over in time, until they eventually cling on to her at the moment of parting.

Predictable? Perhaps...

But the twist to the somewhat stereotyped plot was the subplot of the LA gang scene, along with the surprising subplot of the plight of the Jews in World War II... the Holocaust.

Go figure that one out, but the result was an emotion-filled, inspirational movie. Throw in the lead role's domestic troubles which came at a time when one would have expected a spouse's all-out support and you get the picture.

All one needs to do is look at Hilary Swank's eternally smiling face and one quickly forgets she is playing a character and rallies behind her when her character's husband, played by Patrick Dempsey, opts for a divorce.

What an ass, one is driven into thinking! This, to sum up is what the movie is all about. It is so well-acted that one gets immersed in it so much one forgets one is watching a movie.

There should be a warning at the beginning of the movie that viewers should not watch on a full stomach.

A forearm sliced away with a machété, a head cut open by river boulders, innards cut out supposedly to be sent to a hospital for the poor.

Definitely not for the squeamish! The film does have its merits: great cinematography, electric pacing and the director does know how to milk a suspenseful scene. A couple, though, were milked to the point of ho-hum.

The film paints a rather unflattering picture of Brazil. Reckless bus driver, squalid mountain communities, crime and death... Could be anywhere in the Third World, really.

Acting was at acceptable levels, better, even, than most obscure movies such as this one. A good enough watch, but nowhere near greatness.

Fast-paced thriller, very, very viewable if one is prepared to overlook the time-travel-cum-quantum-physics questions that inevitably arise as the plot unfolds. The problem with this theme is that the storyteller invariably has to deal with the type of realism that the audience comes to expect, not that there ever was a time travel story that ever satisfied an audience's taste for realism.

This time, instead of an out-and-out take on time travel, the writers merged this worn-out concept with that of quantum physics' multi-verse. Not with great success because one asks the question how would altering the past affect the other branches of the time-space continuum. And so forth...

The ending was somewhat lame in that it failed to answer this question to satisfaction. However Denzel's acting was superb, so was his role. The pacing was electric and the story, while dealing with a complicated premise, was surprisingly not very difficult to follow.

Very viewable indeed...

Man sees his family killed in the heat of war, launches a long, long, long chase after the guy he thought responsible. And that was what the whole movie was all about. He gets closer, the "prey" gets away. He gets closer again, and the "prey" gets away again. For the entire bleeding movie.

The beautiful landscapes made viewing the movie bearable, otherwise, the storyline insults the intelligence. What a waste of two excellent actors, it's a wonder at all Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan accepted.

And just to ask, can a half-naked man, after cauterizing his bullet wound and losing consciousness in the snow, just get up and walk away? Having seen many such scenes on reality TV, I would have thought he would have died of hypothermia... or something...

Yes, there was superb acting. Yes, the English subtitles were a novelty. Yes, the battlefields were haunting. Where were the soldiers? I agree that the film tried to dwell on the personal emotions of selected personalities, but having seen war footages of the actual battle for Iwo Jima, I kind of found the smallness of the focus disturbing.

I would not have wanted anything of the scale of Saving Private Ryan, although even that would have helped satiate my need for realism, but there was just nothing in terms of the way the war was really fought, i.e. on a huge scale and, fierce, nay savage! This is not to say the film was bad. On the contrary, it was well-done in many ways. But overall it seemed pretty much like a "stage" version of the real thing, meaning it was just too scaled down.

Once in a while, a movie comes along that simply takes your breath away. This, without a doubt, happens to be one of those. When assassins falling to ambush riders from the mountainside looks like a work of art, then the director and cinematographer have got to be geniuses.

Throughout the film, the use of lighting to draw out a cacophony of colors - in a manner of speaking, that is - simply blows the mind away. Whether inside the imperial palace or in the courtyard, the colors just simply exploded! The fact that the film was in Chinese with subtitles did not detract from the enjoyment of the film. If anything, had it been done in English, it would have detracted from the film's authenticity.

While there was the occasional indulgence in some fight scenes, this was untypical of Chinese films that the fantasy aspect - like flying swordsmen - was kept to a minimum.

Wonderful, wonderful film... and to those who have yet to see it, hurry!

Saw this on cable TV just yesterday... Thought it was just another B-movie set in an Indian Reserve. Found myself glued to the TV till the end. Fantastic pacing, never a dull moment. The plot was simple but the acting, especially by Kilmer, excellent. That is, dramatic without going overboard.

The mountain scenes are terrific, nay, hypnotic to watch. Not that they were photographed in any special way. There were just wonderful locations selected for a very special movie.

The fact that the movie cast the spotlight on a forgotten people, along with their cultural idiosyncrasies, gives the movie a special edge.

Can't believe I missed this one in 1992!